Rated R for some violence, language, brief sexuality and drug use
Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
The problem is unsolvable. It's not a problem for the studio who will rake in the profits. Nor will it be troubling to the scores of "Paranormal Activity" fans who revel in being jolted from their seats by Movies With Really Loud Bangs And Where Things Pop Out At Them. But for those who view their horror with a more discernible eye, they will see a film minus a luster that it can't get back.
What was a clever idea hatched in the original has now become the horror equivalent of a "Where's Waldo?" book where our eyes scan the screen to pinpoint where the next thing will pop out at us. The original "Paranormal Activity" managed to circumvent its narrative gimmick (the setting up of a video camera in the couple's bedroom) and prey on our deepest fears of things that go bump in the night. The difference there was that we actually cared about the young couple, and felt genuinely bad for them as they struggled to come to terms with the deluge of supernatural terror. With these last two sequels, I just stopped caring.
Both "2" and now "3" have gone to painstaking lengths to amplify the camera footage gimmick without realizing that the terror conveyed in the original had little to do with the gimmick itself. The most compelling aspect in the first film wasn't the idea of the camera, but the fact that the camera was set up solely in the bedroom and the "night" scenes took place mostly within those confines. That was key. We could hear odd noises coming from the rest of the house, but our imaginations took control from there. The second movie incorporated a turgid collection of surveillance cameras that displayed every angle of the house and robbed us of the use of our imagination.
If little else, this third installment wisely scraps the surveillance approach in favor of a "Blair Witch"-syle found footage angle. To their credit, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman ("Catfish") get whatever mileage they can from such techniques as a camera mounted on an oscillating fan base, and they do manage to elicit decent enough performances from the cast. (At least the fear these people experience seems genuine, unlike the husband in "2" who lacked even a smidgen of cognizance and was so intellectually bankrupt that when the paranormal entity snapped his neck, it did the human race a favor and I wondered if Whatever It Was was an avid subscriber to Mendel's theory of heredity.) This film is better than the second, but not by much. Getting a viewer to jump at loud noises requires far less skill than igniting their interest and preying on their imagination. These movies aren't as ambitious as you think.
The story opens with adult sisters Katie (Katie Featherston) and Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden) uncovering a cardboard box containing a slew of VHS tapes from their childhood. Days later, the house has been broken into, ransacked, and the tapes go missing. From there, we're shown what was apparently on those tapes... taken back to 1988, where the sisters (Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown) first began to experience the "activity." Their parents (Lauren Bittner and Christopher Nicholas Smith) are a well-meaning couple; the mother a devoted housewife and the father a wedding videographer with a conveniently vast amount of free time. As the terror mounts, the family is forced to flee their house, only to realize (as we already know) that the "activity" isn't linked to the home but to the girls.
As with the previous sequel, the film does offer up a third act "reveal" with plot twists that are equal parts delphic and arbitrary. The advertisements say "Discover the Truth Behind the Activity" but what they don't tell you is that said truth is laughably arcane and leaves more questions than answers. But that, I suppose, is the whole point. Each one of these movies is little more than an excuse for next October's inevitable installment.
Most will disagree with me on this. I know that. And if base-level "BOO" moments are your thing, have at it. But the problem I have is that it doesn't require cinematic skill to make a viewer jump with loud bangs and things popping out of the dark. If someone comes up behind you when you're working and screams in your ear causing you to jump, do you consider that person an artistic genius or an asshole? The line between being captivated and being duped is a fine one in the horror genre and for me, these sequels repeatedly find themselves on the wrong side of that line.
* * out of * * * * stars
What was a clever idea hatched in the original has now become the horror equivalent of a "Where's Waldo?" book where our eyes scan the screen to pinpoint where the next thing will pop out at us. The original "Paranormal Activity" managed to circumvent its narrative gimmick (the setting up of a video camera in the couple's bedroom) and prey on our deepest fears of things that go bump in the night. The difference there was that we actually cared about the young couple, and felt genuinely bad for them as they struggled to come to terms with the deluge of supernatural terror. With these last two sequels, I just stopped caring.
Both "2" and now "3" have gone to painstaking lengths to amplify the camera footage gimmick without realizing that the terror conveyed in the original had little to do with the gimmick itself. The most compelling aspect in the first film wasn't the idea of the camera, but the fact that the camera was set up solely in the bedroom and the "night" scenes took place mostly within those confines. That was key. We could hear odd noises coming from the rest of the house, but our imaginations took control from there. The second movie incorporated a turgid collection of surveillance cameras that displayed every angle of the house and robbed us of the use of our imagination.
If little else, this third installment wisely scraps the surveillance approach in favor of a "Blair Witch"-syle found footage angle. To their credit, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman ("Catfish") get whatever mileage they can from such techniques as a camera mounted on an oscillating fan base, and they do manage to elicit decent enough performances from the cast. (At least the fear these people experience seems genuine, unlike the husband in "2" who lacked even a smidgen of cognizance and was so intellectually bankrupt that when the paranormal entity snapped his neck, it did the human race a favor and I wondered if Whatever It Was was an avid subscriber to Mendel's theory of heredity.) This film is better than the second, but not by much. Getting a viewer to jump at loud noises requires far less skill than igniting their interest and preying on their imagination. These movies aren't as ambitious as you think.
The story opens with adult sisters Katie (Katie Featherston) and Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden) uncovering a cardboard box containing a slew of VHS tapes from their childhood. Days later, the house has been broken into, ransacked, and the tapes go missing. From there, we're shown what was apparently on those tapes... taken back to 1988, where the sisters (Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown) first began to experience the "activity." Their parents (Lauren Bittner and Christopher Nicholas Smith) are a well-meaning couple; the mother a devoted housewife and the father a wedding videographer with a conveniently vast amount of free time. As the terror mounts, the family is forced to flee their house, only to realize (as we already know) that the "activity" isn't linked to the home but to the girls.
As with the previous sequel, the film does offer up a third act "reveal" with plot twists that are equal parts delphic and arbitrary. The advertisements say "Discover the Truth Behind the Activity" but what they don't tell you is that said truth is laughably arcane and leaves more questions than answers. But that, I suppose, is the whole point. Each one of these movies is little more than an excuse for next October's inevitable installment.
Most will disagree with me on this. I know that. And if base-level "BOO" moments are your thing, have at it. But the problem I have is that it doesn't require cinematic skill to make a viewer jump with loud bangs and things popping out of the dark. If someone comes up behind you when you're working and screams in your ear causing you to jump, do you consider that person an artistic genius or an asshole? The line between being captivated and being duped is a fine one in the horror genre and for me, these sequels repeatedly find themselves on the wrong side of that line.
* * out of * * * * stars
