Paranormal Activity 3

As I said in the title, if you enjoyed the first two films, this is well worth seeing. Yes it does re-hash some concepts from the previous two, yes there are some laughs, you may be left with some un-answered questions, and yes, a lot of the scenes from the trailer aren't in the actual film.

But you know what, if you want to see a masterpiece in inventive horror, watch a DVD of The Exorcist. If you want to watch something that will scare the crap out you psychologically, watch The Ring or The Shining. This film is exactly what it says on the tin, the third installment of a pretty decent series of films.

So some of the frights have been used before, they still made my heart skip a beat when they were on a big screen. And the scenes from the trailer weren't in the film itself, so what, the scenes that made up the film itself were done well. I'm guessing if you're still reading you're a fan of the first two films, if that is the case, ignore the iffy reviews and go see.

If you want to be anal about trailer scenes, plot holes and "what is the answer" questions, wait for the DVD.

To be honest, I never liked Paranormal Activity movies. It's about people who lived in a house with cameras and there are evil spirits haunting them then all of the events are caught on tape. The idea is interesting but the execution always end up being unsatisfying. Paranormal Activity 3 is the very beginning of the series. It's not actually a prequel. It's more of a backward trilogy to make the ending of the rest of the Paranormal Activity films mysterious. Although, the twist is a little bit predictable but Paranormal Activity 3 has a decent story to tell with these found footage. And it really has the scares. Finally, this series has a genuine scare.

Paranormal Activity 3 reveals all the mysteries of the first two movies. Unlike the first two, instead of watching the lives of these people and wait for the spirits to come out, this one really tells a story through the videos. The story is not anything new though but the execution is decent. The second Paranormal Activity narrates almost everything in the story. Here you don't need it, you just have to look at the video footage to know the story.

Aside from its storytelling, Paranormal Activity is all about the scares. They improved the scares by moderating the slow burns and keep the objects floating. The ghosts aren't quite invisible like the first two. Here, it's campy. You can see its shadows. And of course, there's a lot of threat from the ghost. The scares are more than just jump scares. It has more terror and gumption to the thrills which is kinda fun. The cameras are well shot. Everything is well made. But the twist remains predictable for some reason.

Paranormal Activity 3 is not earning the fear anymore. It's now earning the scares. It's great to see Paranormal Activity with exact scares than wait for more than five minutes to be scared. It's not the scariest horror movie of the year but it's the best part of the series and also the most decent horror of the year. I still wanna see the parts on the trailer that wasn't show in the actual film but Paranormal Activity 3 is satisfying enough in its short runtime. Decent enough as a found-footage-horror-film.

Of Paranormal Activity 3, I can tell you this much: Chances are, if the first one didn't do much for you and you found the second one to be kind of blah and repetitive, there's no way you'll like the third one. That's a fact. The setup and premise are familiar, even if the characters are not. So as such, I can understand someone's not liking this one much at all. But. I personally found the first and second ones to be pretty scary – even when, in the second one, I knew stuff was going to happen. It has to be a good film when you're surprised even when you expect something, right? So, right or wrong, I loved this movie. It gave me what I was seeking, and more.

Whereas the second film was set shortly before the first one, this film takes a look at the childhood of Katie, the protagonist of the first film. You may recall that as the first movie progressed, Katie became convinced that something was after her specifically – but she couldn't imagine why. This movie attempts to resolve that issue. And you sort of have to give credit to a movie that resolves some things while leaving other threads dangling just enough to make one wonder what the hey is going on.

It's 1988. Young Katie lives with her younger sister Kristi, her mom Julie, and Julie's boyfriend Dennis. Strange things are afoot in their house, around the same time that young Kristi begins communicating with an imaginary friend named Toby. Is it a normal kid phase, or is it something more sinister? As with the other films, cameras are placed around the house to capture anything odd that may happen during the night. (In a clever bit of ingenuity, Dennis takes apart an oscillating fan and places a camera on it so that he can pan from living room to kitchen and back.)

What makes a movie like this work for me is the same thing that made The Blair Witch Project work (and its sequel not work at all) – it feels voyeuristic, as if we were simply peeking in on some family's everyday lives. Reasons are given for the constant filming (Dennis tells Kristi, for example, that he's "testing" his new camera as they have a tea party.) We're automatically drawn to the video footage. What will we see? We're now ready for something – will it jump out at us? Will furniture be overturned? Or something even worse?

The mood is another huge selling point. People react as you'd expect them to. Dennis is obsessed with finding out what's causing those noises and other disturbances; Julie thinks he's completely off his rocker and becomes more testy as time goes by. People who also experience the occurrences, like a babysitter and a friend of Dennis, are stunned to the point of not wishing to discuss the matter further, hurriedly leaving as soon as possible.

Now, I can't say that everyone, even those who love to be scared, is going to love this as much as I did. For me, since we see almost everything through the lens of a camera, the terror – and the anticipation – are grossly heightened. When that door is opened, what will we find? It's not going to be pretty, but unlike a standard horror film where one can simply slough off a shock as being too fantastic, here we're so easily drawn in by and engaged with our surrogate family that we feel as terrified and mystified as they do.

Paranormal Activity 3 won't answer everything that the first two may have left unsolved, but it does offer hints as to why, in the present day, these events are still occurring to Katie and her family. We see a part of that genesis, and it's not really what I expected. I was unsettled and thankful I hadn't seen the movie at night. Okay, that might be a little hyperbolic, and when some of you actually watch the movie you'll laugh at me for being skittish. I don't care. I enjoyed the movie, and that's all I'm concerned with.

The first two Paranormal Activity films were quite random. They were essentially a contemporary haunted house tale that took things to a comical level. I know I'm not alone in thinking those movies were hilarious. In the third installment, however, the frights start to creep in. We do get a lot of the usual antics that have become trademarks of the franchise, but as the story progresses, we begin to understand the cause of it. Fans of the series will love it... and those who are not, may be tempted to give the franchise a second chance. This is a very effective prequel and allows you to look at the other two films in a whole new light. Plus, now that we know the whole story, the fourth installment sounds very promising.

Saw "Paranormal Activity 3" at a special Hollywood premiere at the ArcLight. I also had the honor of seeing Katie Featherston signing autographs for us fans waiting patiently to see it. Unfortunately, I left my Droid smart phone in the car because it was my understanding we would be wanded for recording devices. That didn't happen and many people had their camera phones with them. I would have loved to get my pic taken with Katie. Oh well.

Anyway, back to the movie. "Paranormal Activity 3" is a prequel to the first two movies. The movie starts in 2005 with Katie getting together with her younger sister Kristi at her house and both come across some old VHS tapes of them taken in 1988 when they were children left behind by their deceased grandmother. They watch a tape and that is the premise of the film.

The overriding glaring error in this film is that the entire 1988 portion of the film was shot in HD in 1:85:1 or 16 x 8 ratio which caused me to ask the question "oh really?" If my memory is correct, HD video in that ratio did not exist. The film would have been more realistic had the picture quality looked more like VHS with the ratio in 1:33:1 or 4x3. The father, Dennis, works as a wedding videographer and he has a linear editing system consisting of two 4x3 monitors and VHS tape similar to the editing system I used when I took video production classes in college in the early 1990s so the film gets kudos for that.

The film starts with young Katie celebrating her birthday with her little sister Kristi looking on. As the story progresses, we discover that Kristi has an imaginary friend named Toby. When it's time for the girls to go to bed, Kristi gets up, walks toward the camera (yes, just like the first two movies, this family has camcorders set up around the house recording their life) and starts talking to her imaginary friend. Meanwhile, Dennis and his wife Julie decide to make love while the camera is rolling. Just as things start to get hot, an earthquake strikes. As Dennis and Julie run out of their room to check on the kids, crushed pieces of plaster fall from the ceiling. When the plaster lands, it appears to hit something invisible, the first sign that there is a spirit in their midst. Throughout the film, things escalate as Kristi's imaginary friend starts taking things to higher levels causing her older sister Katie great worry and concerning Dennis as the paranormal happenings are all caught on tape.

The first "Paranormal Activity" film had a great premise in which a couple liked to record their life on tape. Problem with making sequels with a story like this is you get every family recording their lives on tape and so you start to wonder why is it that every generation of this family likes documenting every move they make? Another thing I found tedious is that like the first two movies (and practically most clichéd horror films), this film contained quite a bit of "scare scenes" that makes you jump. This film had a few legitimate scares but had one that was so predictable, I didn't even budge in my seat when it happened.

With every subsequent sequel having more or less the same premise, you start to wonder when this story is getting old.