Paranormal Activity 3 Review

Paranormal Activity 3 recently landed on video on demand and DVD and it seems timely to review. One thing is for sure with PA3, you have your work cut out for you. The first installment was pretty awesome. It stood out in a pack of POV, mockumentary style movies of the time. It was creepy, it was chilling and the ending made your blood run cold. The sequel, well, it was shabby at best. PA3, you’re coming from a deficit position, so you’ll really need to scare the bejesus out of me to save the franchise. And, you can’t use the same shock elements. That’s cheating.

Paranormal Activity 3 has to be different. It needs to be different. It can’t recycle the same things that worked for the original, yet it still needs to align itself with the first one. The story is a prequel, from a timeline standpoint, this all happened well before the events of 2006. This movie is cobbled together from VHS footage from 1988. Katie and Kristi are two sisters, living with their family in suburban California. Katie discovers an invisible friend who she calls Toby. It turns out Toby is possibly a demon, at the very least he’s a ghost who likes to open and close doors. A lot. This seems to be his calling card, so he’s not a terribly inventive ghost. There’s much more you can do to screw with homeowners minds. As is expected the small disturbances ramp up until someone gets dragged by their feet.

The family flees their home, hoping to find refuge at Grandma Lois’ house. It’s not the sanctuary they were expecting.

This movie feels like it’s borrowing from Poltergeist. Like Carol Ann and her TV friends. There are some great spooky moments in this movie, like when Katie jumps off the open concept ledge in her bedroom to the kitchen below. We know it’s about a 20 foot drop and just before she leaps off, we hear her say “Promise?” as though someone has reassured her that they will catch her.
Sadly, there aren’t enough of these moments and most of the physical manifestations of the hauntings are doors opening and closing. There’s nothing new here. The scares are few and far between and it’s nowhere near as tense as the first one.

PA3 needed to bring their A game to make up for the last one. This movie is utterly mediocre. They just didn’t have a ghost of a chance.

5/10