I've learned 2 things today: Paranormal Activity 3 is a really scary movie and I'm one of the 5 people under age 35 that are capable of not talking for an hour and a half.
One of the unfortunate perils of seeing movies in theaters is the possibility that the audience is filled with disrespectful, juvenile, bros in flat-brimmed baseball caps and simpering, self-entitled college girls who really believe the entire audience should be made aware of their every thought and fear during the runtime of the film. I am not kidding when I say one asshole brought a bulb-style bike horn to the theater, and squeaked it during the movie. (P.S. if you are one of those people, you need to end yourself immediately. A movie ticket costs at least $9, that is way too expensive to be forced to listen to you trying to pretend we're all here for your stand up hour. Nobody needs your commentary, keep it to your damned self.)
That said, I think it's even more impressive that Paranormal Activity 3 is one of the most skin-crawling, gut-wrenchingly scary movies I have seen all year. Despite the best efforts of the Mask of the Brotasm I was able to get involved enough in this movie to be concerned that I had just eaten and neglected to bring a change of pants.
Paranormal Activity 3 is a distant prequel to the events of Paranormal Activities 1 and 2, taking place in 1988. It chronicles the initial haunting of Katie and her sister Kristi by the demon that would later torment them in adulthood. PA3 has one of the more believable reasons for a found footage movie to have cameras everywhere: Katie and Kristi live with their mother, Julie, and her boyfriend, Dennis. Dennis is a professional cameraman. He makes his living by video taping other people's important events. This is why he has a garage full of cameras, VHS tapes, and editing equipment. It's far more plausible than PA2's nanny/security cameras.
PA3 also has the good sense to drop the number of cameras used from the absurd total PA2 had. For a large portion of the movie PA3 only uses 2 cameras. They eventually add a 3rd camera, which has been attached to an oscillating fan, in order to catch more action. This camera in particular had amazing potential for scary shots because it was in a regular motion. They could easily add or remove elements from the scene when the camera wasn't showing them and also set off jump scares just barely out of frame. The fact that you never really know what was going to show up as the camera was oscillating really contributed to the amount of tension those scenes had.
They also introduce a "witchcraft" aspect to the movie as a means of explanation of the presence of the demon, but they barely spend any time on it. It results in providing some context to things, without explaining them too much.
They expertly build and release tension and exploit that to make great scares, and not just jump scares. The scares here are far more shocking than the original movie, but rely more on tension than what the second movie did.
I think I might like it better than the original, but I might need to sit on that statement for a few weeks, maybe rewatch them both when they do a DVD release. It's a very good movie and well worth ponying up the cash to the theater to see.
Tomorrow we begin the trip around the world, starting with David Cronenburg's The Brood, in North America.
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