The anticipation for a good, scary movie this Halloween can finally come to an end: Paranormal Activity 3 is here, and it’s better than the second one! Paranormal Activity 1, 2, and 3, are movie sequels presented backwards; part three takes us back to when the two sisters, Katie and Kristi (the main characters), were little girls and how the haunting began.
In PA3, Dennis, the girl’s stepfather and a wedding videographer (played by Christopher Nicholas Smith), is recently married to Julie, the girls’ mother (Lauren Bittner), and is responsible for the three cameras that are set up in the house. Keep in mind that since this movie is taking us back to the year 1988, the played back tapes and dress code manage to set a realistic vibe of an old 80’s scary movie.
Just like in PA1 and PA2, cameras are set all over the house in order to solve the mystery of what goes on at night while everybody is asleep. The first camera is placed in the master bedroom, where Julie and Dennis sleep; the second camera is located in the girls’ bedroom; and the third camera is set on an old base of a fan that captures the living room/kitchen are by slowly moving back and forth from one room to the other (which was a pretty creative technique done by an 80’s wedding videographer).
Kristi, the youngest of the sisters, has an imaginary friend name Toby (who you come to realize isn’t the an imaginary friend that you thought he was throughout the movie), and within the first night of recording you get immediate shocking footage of what seems to be a ghost. As more nights pass by, Dennis’s cameras capture things that can’t be explained, leading to the girls becoming haunted more and more.
Playing a very significant role, the girl’s maternal grandmother also appears in the movie. Any PA movie fan understands or will understand why the grandmother is an important character once they see PA3; it is thrilling, scary, and continuously keeps you jumping from your seat—making the movie worth watching.
Unlike the other first two movies, PA3 doesn’t hesitate to make the audience jump from their seats, or even scream, letting audience member truly fear what the cameras might capture next. My full attention was immediately caught just from watching how a camera was moving back and forth, from the living room to the kitchen (which by the way, was one of the most nerve-wrecking filming techniques used in all three movies), to how a camera that is simply standing still in the bedroom records some of the most scary scenes in the movie.
While PA3 answers some of the questions from PA2 and PA1, its ending is a cliff hanger, which leads to the assumption of a continuous franchise movie. There couldn’t be a more perfect month release date for Paranormal Activity 3 than October, and I sure hope that we continue to get more paranormal activity footage of this chilling story next year.