Day Twenty-Eight: "Paranormal Activity 3"
Paranormal Activity 3 suffers from a weak story. And being absolute crap.
Remember when I reviewed PA2 and said the demon stole a bunch of Katie and Kristi's home movies out of the basement? These are those home movies.
In 1988, Dennis moves in with his girlfriend and her children, Katie and Kristi. He notices weird things happening in the house, so he decides to use all the cameras he has for his videographer job and use them to film what's going on. Mostly, nothing scary happens. Though, there is a scene with an oscillating camera. While the babysitter is sitting at the kitchen table wearing headphones, we see one of the girls in a ghost sheet come down the stairs. The camera follows her to where she's standing behind the babysitter. It starts moving back toward the stairs and just before the ghost is cut out of frame, the sheet falls to the floor with nothing beneath it.
We do learn the backstory, finally. And it isn't worth it. So the girls' grandmother made an agreement with a demon that it could have her first male descendant in exchange for wealth. The demon gives her money. And then Grandmother has a daughter. The daughter only has daughters. But the demon is starting to get antsy (for a being as old as eternity, it isn't really patient) and begins talking to Kristi. Including telling her that they were going to get married.
And his name is Toby. Seriously. What kind of demon name is Toby? I mean, they could've gone slightly menacing. Every time I hear Toby, I think of Roots.
I just didn't like this film. It wasn't scary to me. What made the other two work was that most of the supernatural stuff was very subtle. In this one, most of the demon stuff happened directly in front of the camera. It was very blatant, and that kept undercutting the tension. (Though, as I said, the scene with the oscillating camera was really well done.)
Plus, the demon's name just really brought me out of the film. It was comical. At the very least, they should've made an Exorcist reference and called it Pazuzu or something. Anything would've been better than what they went with.
I recommend steering away from this one. I'm a mark for these films, and this one didn't scare me.
Remember when I reviewed PA2 and said the demon stole a bunch of Katie and Kristi's home movies out of the basement? These are those home movies.
In 1988, Dennis moves in with his girlfriend and her children, Katie and Kristi. He notices weird things happening in the house, so he decides to use all the cameras he has for his videographer job and use them to film what's going on. Mostly, nothing scary happens. Though, there is a scene with an oscillating camera. While the babysitter is sitting at the kitchen table wearing headphones, we see one of the girls in a ghost sheet come down the stairs. The camera follows her to where she's standing behind the babysitter. It starts moving back toward the stairs and just before the ghost is cut out of frame, the sheet falls to the floor with nothing beneath it.
We do learn the backstory, finally. And it isn't worth it. So the girls' grandmother made an agreement with a demon that it could have her first male descendant in exchange for wealth. The demon gives her money. And then Grandmother has a daughter. The daughter only has daughters. But the demon is starting to get antsy (for a being as old as eternity, it isn't really patient) and begins talking to Kristi. Including telling her that they were going to get married.
And his name is Toby. Seriously. What kind of demon name is Toby? I mean, they could've gone slightly menacing. Every time I hear Toby, I think of Roots.
I just didn't like this film. It wasn't scary to me. What made the other two work was that most of the supernatural stuff was very subtle. In this one, most of the demon stuff happened directly in front of the camera. It was very blatant, and that kept undercutting the tension. (Though, as I said, the scene with the oscillating camera was really well done.)
Plus, the demon's name just really brought me out of the film. It was comical. At the very least, they should've made an Exorcist reference and called it Pazuzu or something. Anything would've been better than what they went with.
I recommend steering away from this one. I'm a mark for these films, and this one didn't scare me.