Review: Paranormal Activity 3

We begin in 2005 with Katie Featherston delivering a bunch of videotapes to her sister Kristi’s house. Kristi (Sprague Grayden) finds that they are recordings from 1988 and the house Kristi and Katie lived in as children (played by Jessica Tyler Brown and Chloe Csengery, respectively) with their mother (Lauren Bittner) and her boyfriend, a tech-head who set up video cameras all around the house. The cameras eventually captured a series of bizarre goings on, that show Kristi and Katie were already well aware of such things long before the events of the first and second film. Johanna Braddy plays a babysitter, in a minor part.

 

The original film was one of the better “Blair Witch Project”-inspired horror films that even managed to unsettle me during the daytime. The second film was essentially the same film made exactly the same way, and with absolutely zero effect. That’s largely because the original gave us about 40 minutes of uneventful setup before the shenanigans began. Thus repeating the process meant I knew I could tune out for about half the film, and was completely disengaged by the time anything actually happened. The delayed, building approach worked the first time because you didn’t know when and where the scares were coming. That doesn’t work the second time around (I wonder if the original then holds up on repeated viewings?). Released in 2011, this third film (a prequel to the previous ones) comes from directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (who co-directed something called “Catfish”), and writer Christopher B. Landon (“Paranormal Activity 2”). It continues the trend of doing the same damn thing exactly the same damn way. This time the result is even lesser than lesser. It’s almost nothing, and is definitely a shameless grab for money.

 

Like the “Saw” series, the quality ain’t improving with each shameless entry in the series. The formula in this film appears to be: silence + silence + silence + silence + silence + BANG! x 3= Infinite Boredom. The only thing I was focused on were the loud noises about to make me jump out of my seat. The story failed to interest me at all, the characters even less. I’m sorry, but making me jump isn’t the same as making me scared. And I don’t like being startled (You should see me during a thunderstorm, at almost age damn 33). The best horror films, even those that make you jump, will make you jump because you’re so engrossed in the story that you can’t help but jump. Here, if I jumped it’s solely because there was a loud noise. I’m a wimp who jumps when a car’s exhaust backs out, for cryin’ out loud. It’s seriously the most repetitive film I’ve seen in ages, with the exact same camera set-up showing a panning view from the kitchen to the living room, and nine times out of ten, you’re not seeing a damn thing worth capturing. And for a film where most of the ghostly happenings occur in the bedroom, that makes it doubly pointless.

 

Once again featuring actors familiar to anyone with a freaking TV set (Sprague Grayden from a season of “24” and “Greek” semi-regular Johanna Braddy), the film doesn’t work as a “BWP”-style reality-horror, either. I mean, everyone has seen “24” surely (and if not, it’s your loss, most seasons were stellar), and knows Sprague Grayden played the President’s bitch of a daughter on one season.

 

I know I’m going to be accused of nitpicking, but why does the image quality for late 80s-era video camera shots look like 2011 video quality? Because it is. Oopsy. Sorry, I know it’s probably impossible to use real cameras from the era, but geez, at least do your best to give us faux-80s footage. Here the lighting is way too good and the hi-def image is way too crisp for 88 (Not to mention widescreen). Such a simple mistake and it took me out of the film even further. The conceit doesn’t work for a second, and that’s a shame because the actors playing the kids are really good and pretty natural on screen. Oh, and the mother (Lauren Bittner) is really hot, too. Sorry, but that’s it for niceties.

 

The ending pretty much rips off the vastly superior “The Last Exorcism”, which also annoyed me. This is lazy, redundant, and worthless. These filmmakers are cynical jerks taking advantage of you (For starters, as many people are aware, almost none of the footage from the trailers appears in the actual film. That’s just moral bankruptcy if you ask me). Don’t let them do that. Like the “Saw” films, this series seems to be filling out all the little nooks and crannies in the story that seem less and less important with each film. Everything necessary was in that first film, everything else is just shameless cash-grabbing. There is absolutely no reason outside of financial gain for something as thin and repetitive as this to have been stretched out over several films. This one comes billed as a prequel, but it doesn’t so much add anything to the story or characters so much as repeat the same damn story but several decades earlier. This is a complete waste of time.

 

Rating: D-