Paranormal Activity 3

I just looked at the ratings I gave P1 and P2... a 9/10 and 6/10 respectively. I don't know if I'd rate them that high today! I did enjoy P1 (but not that much), but P2 could probably go down a few steps seeing as it was exactly the same as P1.

Taking over from the director of P1 and P3, Oren Peli, are Catfish directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. If you haven't seen Catfish, give it a go; even now people I talk to are undecided about what actually happened! Christopher B Landon, scribe of P2, wrote the screenplay.

It's 2006 and we are briefly reunited with Katie (Katie Featherstone) and her sister Kristy (Sprague Grayden) from the previous flicks and shown some footage of even more past-er events recorded on good ol' fashioned VHS tapes. On tape, it's September 1998. Young Katie (Chloe Csengery - Parenthood) is celebrating her birthday with a younger (naturally) Kristy (Jessica Tyler Brown - Hawthorne), mum Julie (Lauren Bittner - Bride Wars) and her mum's boyfriend Dennis (Christopher Smith - The Office US). Dennis videos weddings.

Kristy has an imaginary friend called Toby. I'm sure you can tell where that is going. Things start to go bump in the night so Dennis rigs up video recorders in their bedroom, the kids room and in the kitchen. He even converts an oscillating fan to make the video camera, well, oscillate.

Just like the other films, the bumps and stuff intensify, Dennis catches a whole lot of creepy stuff on film which he shows to his friend Randy (Dustin Ingram - Meet Monica Velour). When Kristy is taken to hospital, Randy is left to babysit Katie. He won't be doing that again.

Dennis starts reading books about the occult and learns a bit more about what is going on; that's what books do. Fed up and scared shitless of what is going on in the house, the family travel to Julie's mum's place... if we learnt anything from the first two flicks, it doesn't matter where these girls go, Toby is sure to follow.

This one was much better than P2 so do go and see it if you're in doubt. It seems in each of the films we learnt a little bit more about the whole situation as we go further back in time. I don't know how much longer this can go on, unless someone finds a whole bunch of Super8 film in a canister somewhere... This film mentioned stuff happening in a particular year that would be a tad ridiculous if they did end up making a film about that. (Did that make sense?) It would be a bit like jumping the shark.

While some of the scares were predictable, there were a couple of times I jumped, which is good! There is talk of P4, no doubt it will be a prequel. Mind that shark. Is it weird that the shot in the poster is not in the film? In fact, lots of bits from the trailer weren't in the film either... director's cut perhaps?

Things I learnt: don't live in a two storey house in the burbs; never let your sister leave boxes of crap in your basement; check behind your grandma's paintings...

I should downgrade P2 to a four out of ten so I can give this one...

Six out of ten.
Better.