The Details

Paranormal Activity 3

Christopher Nicholas Smith, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, Lauren Bittner

Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Rated R

Beyond the Weekly

Official Movie Site

IMDb: Paranormal Activity 3

Rotten Tomatoes: Paranormal Activity 3

The producers of the Paranormal Activity franchise have worked diligently not to deviate from the formula established by the original 2009 surprise hit, so the people who enjoyed the first two movies will probably also enjoy the new Paranormal Activity 3, since it pretty much adheres to the same template. Once again, the filmmakers avoid having to follow up on the original story by offering up a prequel, this time heading back in time to 1988, when haunted sisters Katie (Katie Featherston) and Kristi (Sprague Grayden) were just little girls.

Featherston and Grayden show up in a brief prologue establishing the previously unmentioned existence of a box of videotapes from their childhood, and then directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (of the documentary Catfish) show us the footage from those tapes, which once again involves an unsuspecting couple filming the supernatural goings-on in their nice suburban house. Young Katie (Chloe Csengery) and young Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) live with their mother Julie (Lauren Bittner) and stepfather Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith), who conveniently is a wedding videographer and thus has access to the best video-camera technology 1988 has to offer. When he catches a glimpse of something mysterious on one of his home movies, Dennis decides to set up cameras around the house to see if he can capture any supernatural occurrences.

Thus follow the same slow-building scares as in the first two movies, relying mainly on sudden noises and creepy background movement. The videos don’t much look like they come from 1988, and the approach that felt fresh in the first movie now is mostly tiresome. Joost and Schulman come up with one clever new angle on the cameras set up around the house, maximizing the tension coming from not knowing what’s just outside the frame by placing one camera on an oscillating fan. But that device isn’t used to its maximum potential, and the rest of the big scares are pretty familiar.

Like the second movie, PA3 expands on the series’ mythology in a way that makes things more convoluted and less scary, with explanations that turn the events from mysterious to banal. Thanks to the added creepiness of knowing how messed-up Katie and Kristi will turn out as adults (plus an unsettling performance from Brown as young Kristi), PA3 is a little more effective than its immediate predecessor, but its rehash of the same techniques indicates a franchise whose creativity is quickly being exhausted.