It seemed so innocent in the beginning.
When the first “Paranormal Activity” came out all those years ago in 2009, it was a breath of fresh air to the horror genre. No longer did intricate death traps and gore rule the Halloween film season. Instead, horror became about blue-tinged handheld footage, nameless casts, subtle details and production budgets that could barely cover the catering costs on most film sets.
Two years and over $200 million later, “Paranormal Activity 3” hits theaters. Unfortunately, with only three films under its belt, the once-original series has become as stale and repetitive as the gory horror franchises it replaced.
Since most of the characters from the first films are now either dead or possessed, the third installment logically heads back to the ’80s. Katie and Kristi (Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown) are now children living with their mom (Lauren Bittner) and stepdad (Christopher Nicholas Smith). Oh, and Toby, the demon who lives in a small cove upstairs and takes discomfiting interest in the young girls.
Of course, the stepdad works as a wedding videographer, so when the doors start unexpectedly slamming, he immediately whips out the camera to find the source of the haunting.
The rest of “Paranormal Activity 3” follows the tried-and-true formula of the previous films. It consists of creepy nighttime footage of slowly escalating ghost behavior with some daytime scenes thrown in to give the audience time to decompress.
Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who got the job with their work on the Facebook documentary “Catfish,” don’t have much to add to what audiences have seen before. Once again, a person with a demon face makes an aggressive hop at the camera, and the ghost uses the kitchen to make his presence loudly known. It’s all becoming rather rote and predictable. The series could at least use some other rooms, like maybe the garage, for variety’s sake.
The duo of directors introduces one clever trick to the series, though. In a stroke of genius, the stepdad attaches a camera to a rotating fan. The camera slowly pans from the living room to the kitchen, then back again. It’s a cool idea that builds suspense, but Joost and Schulman never fully utilize the technique to its scare-producing potential. Instead, it’s just another vehicle for lame jump scares, something “Paranormal Activity 3” has plenty of.
Writer Christopher B. Landon shares the directors’ lack of interest in tampering with the series’ blueprint. Much like the previous film, the mom frustratingly refuses to believe in the demon despite her husband’s pleading and the fact that her children are literally running into an invisible specter. Landon’s “twist” ending also comes as a disappointment, providing very little surprise and even fewer scares.
While “Paranormal Activity 3” may not produce many screams, it has plenty of nail-biting, grab-the-person-next-to-you intensity. The series has always been known for its tremendous build-up — the first movie’s lone scare scene was its last. The latest installment keeps this tradition going. Each scene slowly builds on top of the last, slowly increasing the audience’s heart rate at the same time.
The film, however, never truly delivers on its tremendous build-up. It’s a horrible tease, not horrifying. The only people who will lose sleep from “Paranormal Activity 3” are its producers, who will have to come up with something a lot better for the inevitable “Para-four-mal Activity.”
