Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

The classic game of Where’s Waldo continues with the third installment of Paranormal Activity 3. This time we are taken back to the year 1988 when Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and Katie (Katie Featherston), the stars from the first two films, are just wee little girls. Young Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) makes friends with an invisible “friend” called Toby. Sister Katie (Chloe Csengery), mom Julie (Lauren Bittner), and mom’s boyfriend Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) don’t take Toby seriously until Toby gets pissed and the crap starts to hit the fan.

Paranormal Activity 3 is better than the second one and gets to the bumps upstairs, lights moving, and pictures falling off the wall much quicker than its predecessors. There were a lot more scares this time around too. Amazing what a little bit more of a budget can do when it comes to ghosts and demons. However, a lot of the scares were fake-outs and you could see them coming from 30 miles away, but there were a few genuine spooky and tense moments as well. The two kids playing the sisters did a great job portraying scared little girls, so good, in fact, that I wonder if they even told them they were filming a movie or just threw them in a room and didn’t bother to tell them they’d be scaring the crap out of them.

Don’t expect to see anything you saw in the trailer in the movie. I think there may have been a few things from the trailer that were in the film (depending on which trailer one you watched); otherwise, it’s all new stuff. The film as a whole, though, is more of the same as the first two. The same formula is used and you know what’s going to happen. The end was a bit surprising, and they kind of gloss over some interesting stuff, which was especially frustrated considering how much time these movies like to have absolutely nothing happening. If you love the previous films, you’ll enjoy this one as well.

This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve just been kicked in the ass!