Paranormal Activity 3
The third time around, and creator/producer Oren Peli’s haunted house thrillers still manage to push my fright buttons. As I said in my review of “Paranormal Activity 2”– I’m still more than a little scared about things that go bump in the night. Rewatching the first two films before watching the third and– I’m hoping –final film in this popular horror franchise, I found myself watching all corners of the screen, looking for the slightest sign of something…unusual, and that moviewatching tic carried over to part 3 on the big screen. Thankfully, I sat reasonably far back, so I was able to do so without really putting a crick in my neck.
Written by Christopher B. Landon, the franchise moves further into the past as we look at the origins of sisters Katie and Kristi’s encounters with the supernatural force that haunted, and killed, their loved ones in the first two films. The year is 1988, and the young sisters are living with their mother, Julie (Lauren Bittner), and her cameraman boyfriend, Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith). Kristi (played by Jessica Brown) has begun to talk with an “imaginary friend” who goes by Toby, at which point, strange things begin to happen around the house. Nothing extraordinary; just garden-variety haunting sounds and creepiness. But it’s enough to get Dennis to put up cameras around the house: one in his and Julie’s room; one in the girl’s room; and later, one on a fan motor, which allows it to shift between the living room and the kitchen. The nights begin, and life gets…strange for the family.
The primary reason, I think, this franchise has survived not just the hype, but also a revolving door of writers and directors (in the director’s chair this time around are Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the filmmaker’s behind last year’s controversial doc hit, “Catfish”), is Peli and co.’s singular focus on this one family, and how each film in the series has led, in one way, to the next from a story standpoint. In the first film, we learned that Katie and her sister experienced tragedies in their youth, and their interactions with this force were at the center; in the second film, Kristi’s step-daughter, Ali, learned that Kristi’s family hadn’t had a son in the family since the ’30s, which helped explain why strange things happened around young Hunter. In film three, both of these ideas are brought to life in visceral and unexpected ways as we see the prologue of what came before in Peli’s intelligent and, yes, scary trilogy of terror. Now, I want to see what other ideas he has up his sleeve.
