Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) Review

I suppose the best way to start off a review of the third film in a series is to share my thoughts on the first two entries. I only just recently rented both Paranormal Activity movies, and I have to admit, I was somewhat surprised. The first film was a very well-established thriller. It was well-paced and very detail-oriented (I'll explain later), and for at least the first hour or so, its home video style and disregard of horror cliches almost made it seem real. The second film moved away from that sense of realism, but it nevertheless managed to stay thrilling by sticking to a lot of what made the first film work. As you could imagine, because I liked the first two films so much, I was pumped to see this third film. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but find Paranormal Activity 3 to be pretty underwhelming.



The film jumps back to 1988, when Katie (the woman being attacked in the first film) and Kristi (her sister who was attacked in the second film) were just little girls first coming across this paranormal entity. Kristi calls it "Toby," and her parents assume that it's just an imaginary friend of hers. But as time passes by, the family starts witnessing some.... You guessed it.... paranormal activity, as do several cameras that the dad places around the house. The dad and the girls keep trying to convince the mom that there's something going on, but by the time she's convinced, the damage had already been done.


Let me ask you a question that you'll probably know the answer to better than I; what usually happens when a horror series gets a ton of sequels? They tend to resort to comedy more than scares, right? This film does sort of the same thing, although it's not like they're making a parody of the series or anything. It just spends more time on silly gags that I'm sure even the writers knew were supposed to be funny. Apart from the humor not really being that funny, there are times when the film tricks you into thinking that it's building up to a scary moment when it's just a silly gag, and often times a derivative one at that, such as when the mom leaps out of a closet with a scary mask. But to be fair, I would've preferred a parody film over the attempts at still being thrilling, because even the scary moments don't work.


What made the first two films thrilling for me was that they were very detail-oriented. There were many objects slotted into one frame, but I never knew what was going to happen until it actually happened. Because of that, my eyes kept zipping all around the screen trying to pay attention to what was going to happen. This film, on the other hand, is way too obvious. It has the tendency to keep my eyes focused on one object that's either entirely pointless or obviously the focus of the entire scare. Sometimes, that would mean that one object would stick out like a sore thumb (such as when a lit chandelier is swinging), and other times, there would only be one object in the entire frame, and I could imagine ahead of time what was going to happen with it. On top of that, it has the tendency to rehash a lot of the scares from the first two films, such as everything in the kitchen EXPLODING (for lack of a better word) or the slamming door trick that was already pushing its luck in the second film. It's boring, it's predictable, but it's most certainly not scary.


To its credit, Paranormal Activity 3 at least adds on to the story established in the first two films pretty smoothly, but without any form of excitement, it comes off as a bore. The scary moments aren't scary, the funny moments aren't funny, and the dramatic moments are blatant. If you're in the mood for a good scare for Halloween, I regret to report that those scares are still reduced to DVD rentals. Skip this one.


This movie is worth $4 out of $20.