Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

I enjoyed the first Paranormal Activity film because I didn’t know what to expect and it worked really well. The second one had its moments but it was the first one with a different set up. The third one exists purely because they have clued in a way of making a film cheap and yet making a ton of money. For this one they have gone to the beginning to show how this all started. When they turn a sequel into a prequel its usually a sign that they are starting to run out of ideas. 

There is a brief appearance of Katie & Kristie at the beginning to make us believe that this is part of their story but that is all we see from them which is probably a good thing cause the first two films pretty much told us everything we needed to know. We go back to 1988 and despite it being 1988, they still manage to find a way of making it a found footage film even though things would have run on VHS tapes and they only last six hours and in 1988 they would have been hideously expensive yet this doesn’t seem to be a problem for this family. 

The film does the same thing that the previous two films do which is have quiet and then a big bang and nothing really happens. There are some moments which work but the film doesn’t really find its feet until it moves to the grandmother's house and then you find how it all got started. By then the film is nearly over and then it’s a rush to the finish and then its over. There are some good scares but it’s a bit too late.

There are some good moments. The bit where the ghost under the sheet stood behind the babysitter and then it dropped to the floor was pretty good as was when everything in the kitchen was on the ceiling and then dropped to the floor which was pretty similar to what happened in the second film but it seemed better done in this film.

This isn’t a film that is particularly original and doesn’t do anything new in terms of scares. All that it does is fill in the blanks about Katie and Kristie’s early years and when things started to go wrong in their lives. I know a lot of people don’t like this film very much but I don’t think that it's terrible. It’s nowhere near as bad as the fourth one but at this stage in the franchise, it has pretty much played its card and has no real desire to come up with anything new but just fill in the blanks. It’s not 100% lazy storytelling but it’s pretty close.