As I was watching “Paranormal Activity 3,” I realized how clever these movies are. I was literally watching a home video camera pan back and forth between a living room and a kitchen, waiting for something to jump onscreen and go, “Boo!” I wasn’t soaking up a big budget 3D extravaganza; I was viewing grainy footage of someone’s house at night.
But even as the shot went on for two or three minutes with nothing happening, I could not tear my eyes away. Instead, I focused on the edges of the screen, hoping to see a telling shadow that would save me from the impending shock. My effort was in vain. When the inevitable happened, I momentarily parted ways with my seat. Later, the filmmakers used the same camera – a 1980s VHS unit attached to the base of an oscillating fan – to follow the lady of the house as she goes back and forth between the two rooms. The filmmakers capped the scene with the best shot in the “Paranormal Activity” series, one that rivals the moment in “Poltergeist” when the mother turns and sees chairs neatly stacked on her dining room table for sheer ingenuity.
The “Paranormal Activity” movies reward patience. They also encourage viewers to leave their cynicism at the door. The latter is especially crucial during this third outing, which follows the same format as the previous installments – something goes bump in the night, and the man of the house grows curious and sets up several video cameras in the hopes of catching some creepy high jinks on tape. The thing that went bump in the night does not disappoint him.
The man in this case is the stepfather of Katie and Kristi Rey, the two women whose story has provided the narrative thread that ties the three “Paranormal Activity” movies together. In part one, we watched an unseen entity terrorize Katie and her boyfriend. In the sequel, we found out what happened to Kristi’s family before and immediately following the events of the first movie. The third installment takes us back to the 80s to learn about the source of the evil spirit that has plagued the sisters all of their lives.
The stepfather, Daniel, videotapes weddings for a living, which conveniently provides him with an arsenal of cameras and editing equipment. He places one in the bedroom of his stepdaughters and one in the room in which he and his wife sleep. He also carries a camera with him everywhere he goes. If these movies have one consistent defect, it’s the tendency of the men to videotape things no sane person would bother documenting. When your daughter is cowering in a corner following a brutal supernatural attack, you put down your camera and comfort her.
Despite that minor bit of awkwardness, there are some terrifically staged scares in “Paranormal Activity 3.” About half of them are false jumps, which I normally hate, but they’re so well done, I can’t dock the filmmakers any points for using them. And there are a couple of genuinely creepy moments that don’t involve shocks, just hair-raising spookiness. The crude production values only intensify the experience because they make it easier for viewers to place themselves in these scenes. But what makes “Paranormal Activity 3” work is its story, which dovetails nicely into the rest of the series and ends in a truly shocking manner, and the acting. The two children who played the young Katie and Kristi deliver remarkably natural performances, and the fear Katie exhibits during a scene in which she plays Bloody Mary with her babysitter had me expecting a disclaimer at the end of the movie stating, “No children were psychologically harmed during the making of this movie.”
Is “Paranormal Activity 3” more of the same? Yes, but it’s done better than before. Is it perfect? No, as the characters sometimes do things that don’t make sense, like sleep in rooms where really scary things happened. But is it good? Absolutely.
Rated R for some violence, language, sexuality and drug use. Three stars out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.