Paranormal Activity 3

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

Runtime: 84 minutes

Directed by: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

Starring: Christopher Nicholas Smith, Lauren Bittner, Jessica Tyler Brown, Chloe Csengery

From: Paramount

Oh, this series… I’ve reviewed the first movie and the second one when they were released but in short, I first heard about the original Paranormal Activity way back in ’07. For two long years I waited to see it, and when I finally did I wasn’t disappointed. Due to some clever marketing it became a shockingly huge hit, guaranteeing a sequel. That proved to be better than I expected. Can they do it once again?

This movie was helmed by the guys who gave us Catfish, a controversial movie due to question of how much of it was actually real. Funny then that they were given a fake documentary to direct.

You’ve probably already seen too much from all the damn commercials (more on that later) but I’ll try not to reveal anything here. Basically, you see sisters Katie and Kristi as kids and you get to find how what they alluded to in the first two movies concerning the strange stuff that happened to them as kids. Their mom’s boyfriend films weddings so thus that is why he has the ability to film stuff at night in 1988. And what references to the late 80’s you see, from the fashion to the big VHS camcorders to best of all, a Teddy Ruxpin doll! I’m old enough to remember them back when they were a huge fad.

As for the movie, it’s not bad at all; I’d just rank it below the first two. It’s a shame as the performances are all fine and like the first two, there’s the feeling of dread for most of it and what does scare you, it works. Some of it is obvious special effects, more so than the first two, but the audience went “oh darn” (or rather, cuss words; I just cleaned it up there) a few times. The problem is, where the story went… I heard some people complain about how in the second movie the expansion on the mythology sort of ruined things as they didn’t like what the story was really about. Well, I’m sure they’ll especially dislike the additions made in this movie to the overall story. Even I was unsure about some of it. I mean, I just thought it was goofy.

Then, there was something I can’t really blame the movie for but particularly put a bee in my bonnet. The ads you saw for this movie seemed to give away a lot. That alone doesn’t make me happy; even worse, one major shot you see in the ads, I was expecting to see in the movie. So of course that clip doesn’t appear in the movie at all! I don’t want to give it away as it’d be a spoiler but I even watched all of the end credits to see if there was a surprise after those; no dice. I was-and still am-pretty peeved about that. As is, the ending you saw was certainly creepy… if open-ended. Despite those quibbles, if you enjoyed the first two, you need to check this out.

I'll be back Tuesday night.