I’ve just gotten home from a late-night showing of Paranormal Activity 3 on an IMAX screen in a sold out theater. Fuck yeah!
Paramount Pictures presents Paranormal Activity 3. Written by Christopher B. Landon and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, this film stars: Katie Featherston, Sprague Grayden, Lauren Bittner, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Mark Fredrichs, and Brian Boland.
Read my review after the jump…
I was beginning to worry that Final Destination 5 might actually turn out to be the best Horror film of 2011. Thank God for Paranormal Activity 3! Finally, an American Horror movie we can be proud of. Forums have been buzzing as trailers trickled out on the web these past weeks. A common sentiment is that the trailers alone are better than its predecessor in its entirety. This is true: Paranormal Activity 3 makes Paranormal Activity 2 look like a piece of crap. Know what else? Paranormal Activity 3 makes the original movie seem like a piece of crap.
People will say that I’m pleased because there was more action this time, and it’s true. The negative flip side, however, suggests Saucy Josh (and therefore Horror aficionados en mass) no longer have the attention-span necessary to fully appreciate the slow burning suspense of 1 and 2. Not true.
Paranormal Activity 3 does more with less, especially when compared to Part 2. A high tech surveillance system with (what seemed like) dozens of cameras only delivered a few abrupt thrills. Part 3 just uses three, maybe four cameras tops. By mounting a camera to the base of an oscillating fan, we get a back and forth panoramic view that is also a perfect invention for ratcheting tension. People in the theater were, literally, in agony.
The flaws, if any, are few and far between. While Paranormal Activity 3 was billed with the tagline “Discover the reason for the activity”, astute aficionados will recall that they pretty much explained everything in Part 2. Since I already knew that Grandma is the supernatural root-cause, I didn’t trust her from the get-go and never fell for any of that “You’re safe with grandma” bullshit. In case you weren’t able to create a visual back-story from the descriptions in Part 2—now you don’t have too.
So I feel compelled to address an ever-more frequent phenomenon: Clips for the TV spots and trailers that are NOT actually part of the final film. What’s up with that? First of all, let me assure you that the best scares have not been revealed through promotion. That said, here are a few scenes you might be expecting, but won’t see:
The scene where the mother gets thrown down on a bed; The scene where young Kristie jumps off a second story ledge; The scene where the father-figure compares Kristie to Carol Anne from Poltergeist; The scene where Kristie throws water on the ghost standing beside her mother… Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah—that ENTIRE Bloody Mary scene they’ve been playing the hell out of for ages—NOT a part of the film.
So while these scenes were obviously unnecessary in the brilliant final cut, they’re still in my subconscious. Are filmmakers and studios doing this on purpose, perhaps as a way of enhancing a movie watching experience (without adding potentially boring extra minutes)? Or is it more akin to false advertising? What do the rest of you think? Is this even an real issue?
If you can kind of ignore the fact that there have been way too many “found-footage” Horror films released since The Blair Witch Project shot to popularity in 1999, Paranormal Activity 3 is even better. Here’s a film that really gets it right. I guess that’s why the producers finally felt that credit was due. Unlike the first and second films that end abruptly when the taping stops, Paranormal Activity 3 closes with credits. Does this damage the illusion that what I’ve just seen actually came from an old VHS tape? Not really.
And speaking of VHS tapes, there were a lot more in that box then just the one from 1988. I predict Paranormal Activity 4 gets green-lit before the end of the month.
4 and ½ out of 5 Skulls.
Saucy Josh writes a blog for intelligent Horror Movie aficionados called Blood and Guts for Grown Ups: https://bloodandgutsforgrownups.wordpress.com/