While it seems absolutely impossible, Paranormal Activity 3 is not at all a horrible piece of shit but it rather a creepy and engaging film that tops the first two efforts with an upped ante that doesn’t feel exploitative or redundant.

I think I might hate the Paranormal Activity movies for just how much I end up liking them. As I mentioned in my review for Paranormal Activity 2,  I went in to the first one and eventually the second with the same friend and both of us thought they movies were going to suck and openly mocked them right up until the point when the movies would start engaging us and eventually own us. This year, part 3 showed up right on cue but this time being helmed by the two jokers who were responsible for last year’s Catfish, a film that I hated so hard it was my least favorite movie of the year last year. Armed with this info, my friend and I went into PA3 with a fresh certainty that this one had no hope of not sucking despite the fact that the past two surprised us. I think there might be something paranormal about these movies insofar as they seem to be incapable of failing no matter what weaksauce is poured all over it beforehand. I have never been so consistently wrong on my expectations ever.

Paranormal Activity 3 follows the recent prequel fad and takes the story back to 1988 when the protagonists of the first two movies, Katie (Chole Csengery) and Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown), were children and what happened during the vaguely alluded to scary stuff that happened to them when they were little girls. Having seen what that entails, I am amazed that either of them were able to seem even close to normal in the first two movies. The story plays out in a similar fashion to the previous films, when the girls’ step-dad Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) catches some weird stuff on film as he was trying to video he and his wife Julie (Lauren Bittner) having sex and are distracted by an earthquake. This leads Dennis to mount cameras around the house and they start to catch some bizarre things, not the least of which is Katie’s continued friendship with an imaginary friend named Tobey who may not be so imaginary.

Much like in the last film, the stakes become much higher in this installment and start much earlier. Where the first film made you wait until the last 2o minutes for things to start getting real, Paranormal Activity 3 starts handing things to you pretty quickly. They amp up from there but they start from a more intense place than the previous films. This seems dangerous because it starts stretching credibility and, depending on your sensibilities, that credibility may very well break for you in the third act. Still, the movie builds tension enormously well and even when the jump startles aren’t effective, the pervasive creepiness sure is.

That is really where this movie succeeds, the tension and creepiness. You feel yourself completely engaged and caught up because every scene has you looking for what is going to happen, waiting for the door to slam or a lamp to start to swing…and if that is all they offered you, the movie would fall flat. What they do though is they are constantly ratcheting up the stakes. Sure the door will slam and they might get you in a cheap startle but that isn’t all that is going on and as soon as you settle in knowing that the scene has delivered its payload, they get you again with something bigger and more unexpected. After the first few times this happens, rather than desensitizing you to it, it puts you more on edge because pretty much anything can happen at any time and any artificial sense of safety that you have because you know these two girls grow up to be in the first two films is quickly exposed to be drastically misplaced.

I say ‘they’ because the movie is co-directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman who, as mentioned above, directed Catfish which I hate an awful lot for its misleading marketing and abject lack of anything noteworthy happening. Seeing Paranormal Activity 3 makes me hate Catfish that much more because these guys have some serious skills that they almost maliciously withheld in that movie. Right off the bat, Paranormal Activity 3 succeeds over that film just by virtue that things actually happen in it, but beyond that they really know how to draw tension from a moment and find the scares. There are a lot of startle moments that didn’t really work on me because they are fairly well choreographed at this point, but judging by the reaction of the crowd, I am the exception rather than the rule. The sense of building tension and creepiness is absolutely masterful. They also know how to put creepy situations together and make them work in and of themselves. They also offer some very effective bait and switches that put this one in a class all by itself.

The acting in the film really good insofar as it doesn’t feel like acting at all. Obviously this sort of thing is very important for cinema verite and it is very well done here. The two girls are very effective as cute little girls who can cross into sweet, creepy, scared and cute at the drop of a hat. Smith’s Dennis is not unlike Micah from the first film if just a bit less ridiculous and annoying (that being said, I really dug Micah). Bittner’s Julie is somewhat infuriating as she willfully and stupidly refuses to believe anything that is going on but that is a testament to Bittner’s performance. One real standout is Dustin Ingram as Randy, Dennis’s business partner. Ingram is a source of genuinely funny comic relief early on which punctuates what is my favorite scene in the movie as a whole bunch of hell breaks loose.

As mentioned above, the third act may not hit with some audience members but to my mind the final scenes are the most effectively creepy and desperate of the whole film. You might start to ask yourself why anyone would still be carrying a camera around when things get really insane but honestly I think that is nitpicking on what is a really effective movie told in a really effective way. Still, the final turns might be a bit much and that might tarnish some viewers’ experiences.

Conclusion [9.0 out of 10]

I am not sure exactly when this gravy train is going to derail, but so far the collected teams responsible for this series have been enormously successful. Paranormal Activity 3 is easily the best of the series so far and is well worth checking out. If you absolutely hate this series and think it is all stupid there is really nothing here to change your mind. If you are a fan, however, what you have here is the most well oiled and effective film of the bunch and it shouldn’t be missed.