Review of Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) by Kyle E — 24 Oct 2012

While Paranormal Activity 3 does a decent job of ramping up the scares while also having a few decent terrifying moments of it's own, it still lives in the shadow of the first film.

Perhaps my biggest problem with this sequel, is that it still leaves me with way too many questions. Now, I haven't watched the original film in probably a year now, but as I recall, didn't Katie mention that house was burned down as a result to this whole ordeal? And if that's the case, then this movie kind of rewrites it's own history, at least unless I'm missing something here. The rest of this review is going to be pretty spoilerish, but it's been a year since it came out, so I doubt this will really spoil anything for anyone at this point. Perhaps to me, the film's biggest scare revolves around the sheet incident. When the young girls babysitter is just sitting at the kitchen table, you see off in the distance what you would assume to be one of the young girls playing a prank with a sheet over them. When it gets closer to the girl, however, the sheet falls to the ground and there is nothing underneath it. My hat's off to the film crew for that one. However too much of this film relies around their step father going nuts over this phenomenon. To add to it, the fact that it isn't until the last half hour that this one really picks up, this is probably the slowest moving of the three films. But for what it's worth, I enjoyed it, and especially the ending shed a little more light onto the dark story of these two sisters. However, no house is burned down and it is believed that at the end of this, these girls grandmother is a bonofide satan worshiper, or a witch of some sort. While this whole series of scenes was more frightening to me then the entire film, I still don't understand how this whole film ties to the backstory that was already introduced with these.

Characters. I'm even more curious now to see where things go with the most recently released sequel.

Paranormal Activity 3 is a much better sequel then the previous film, but for anyone looking for some real scares, I fear that this series may be on the way out in that department.