Blumhouse Productions, Paramount Pictures
Katie Featherston, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Sprague Grayden, Lauren Bittner, Mark Fredrichs, Brian Boland
Paranormal Activity 3 is a prequel to the two previous Paranormal Activity films. This one goes all the way back to the 70’s. Set in the mid 80’s when both Kristi and Katie were little girls, this tells the story of how the whole thing with their family started. Some of the stuff was hinted in the previous films, but this one tells us what was going on that started it all. It all starts with the youngest daughter seeing an invisible man in her closet. The husband is a videofile, and runs a business taping weddings, so he has all the equipment and sets up some cameras to see what is going on in the house. Things escalate, and it gets really creepy in the house. It’s not what you see, it’s what you don’t see!
This film will be hated by as many people as those who love it. It’s pretty easy to see why. Most of the jumps are “startles”, like when your friend jumps out of a dark doorway and yells boo to scare the crap out of you. In fact, literally the first few scares are literally that. Someone appearing out of nowhere an pranking the camera is used a few too many times. But if you are someone who did not appreciate scary movies of the creepy pop out and scream sort, then you’re probably going to hate this. However, it is a great addition to the franchise and is probably the best of the three films in many ways. In fact, if someone had not seen ANY of the 3 films, I would suggest doing it in reverse order. This is the first story and sets up all that is to come. The 2nd film shows the precursor to how the demon got into the house in the first one, and the characters are followed from childhood on. If there was a chronological sequence version like the one done for the Godfather series, I would love to see that! Like the Star Wars Episode I, II, and III films, this one takes the hints and suggestions from the first two films and puts it together in a complete story of the prequel to the other two films.
The little girls are awesome as Katie and Kristi and they are very good in this film. Certainly seeing the first one in the theater was shocking as it was all brand new, but this is easily as good. It’s just that we’re a bit jaded. The same tricks are shown again. The fast forwarding of the tape to pass several hours in a few seconds. And why if they’re showing something, does it suddenly jump a few seconds ahead? Tapes didn’t record that way.
Another common complaint about the movie is that High Def color video wasn’t available at the time. True, but if they had used technology in use in the time period, we couldn’t watch it on today’s big screen! So it was a wise choice to show us what happened using today’s technology.
All in all, I really enjoyed this film, as it was a good scary time at Downtown Disney on Halloween night getting scared and feeling like a kid again! I had fun with it, and I would recommend it if you’re in the mood for this kind of scary bump in the night type of film. Two weird things about this film. One is that there are no opening credits at all. Second is that the trailer found below has many, many shots that never made it into the film. This really irritates people to know end, but I wonder sometimes if that’s better than giving the whole story away in the preview. I guess it’s false advertising too, in a way. I’d hate to buy a box of Trix to find it filled with Corn Flakes. 🙂
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