The silliest of franchises - the cinematic equivalent of paying to watch your kitchen and someone popping up and shouting 'BOO!' every twenty minutes - reaches its third (annual) installment and scores the biggest horror opening ever in the USA. Apart from a self-conscious near-contemporary prologue to bring in the two supernaturally-hounded sisters and set up the VHS-taped found-footage conceit, this film is set in 1988 and attempts to show what happened in their childhood that led up to numbers 1 and 2. In its favour, Paranormal Activity 3 is more playful and slightly less clinical than its predecessors, and the scarce subsidiary characters are better served, but this film follows the franchise's own conventions and visual/aural language to the letter and therefore does little to either shock or surprise. The last ten minutes, however - in a desperate attempt to explain the series - is an extraordinary grab-bag of Blair Witch, Poltergeist and Halloween 6, which not only undermines the sisters' stories in the previous two films but also shows how ridiculous the concept has become.
Not that I've watched any of these films but can't help but notice these are the Catfish guys... That's a weird career move!
ReplyDeleteI think the producers were hoping for that same balance of realism and story-telling in Para 3...never mind....
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