Paranormal Activity 3 is the latest example of Mencken’s aphorism, “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”  How else can one explain the record-breaking box-office performance of this minimalist pre-prequel in which almost literally nothing happens—if you thought the first two PA films were light on scary action, trust me, they’re like The Exorcist, Halloween, and Jaws rolled into one compared to Paranormal Activity 3 (I jumped out of my seat once—and that was a “fake” scare—and there were two other scenes I felt were mildly creepy, for about 10 seconds).

            Where to begin?  Rather than attempting to craft a coherent, organised, and reasoned critique of the movie (which is more than it deserves), perhaps I’ll just throw out a few random snarks, complaints, and even a compliment or two…

            The Paranormal Activity series is being produced in reverse chronological order, so each film is a prequel to its immediate predecessor.  It would be interesting to know if this story arc was planned in advance, or if they’re just faking it.  But PA is no Harry Potter series, and it’s not really necessary to have seen the earlier movies to understand the current one—the plot thread connecting them is wispy and tenuous at best.  PA3 makes a stab at going retro (it’s set in 1988), claiming the footage was shot on VHS tapes, but the video quality on-screen doesn’t reflect that.  At this rate, Paranormal Activity 10 will probably consist of cave paintings depicting demonic possession of a luxurious multi-level California mud hut in the Paleolithic Era.

            Which brings up the whole “found footage” format.  Someday perhaps someone will make a good, spooky film about the process of finding and assembling old footage of ghosts and such.  Suffice it to say, Paranormal Activity 3 isn’t that film.  In a more-or-less contemporary prologue, a box of VHS tapes mysteriously disappears.  So what happened to them?  Is this sequence suggesting the producers of this movie stole the tapes and made their movie from them?  No?  This is particularly problematical given the climactic scene of PA3, which raises the same question as The Last Exorcism: if evil wins at the end, who took the “final tape” out of the camera and allowed us to see it?  The bad guys?  Wouldn’t they want to suppress the evidence?  The good guys?  Um, without providing too many spoilers…let’s just say there aren’t too many good guys left alive at the movie’s end.  [As a side note, the last scene in Paranormal Activity 3 reminds me of the end of [Rec].  If that was a deliberate homage, two points for PA3 for acknowledging a far superior “found footage” horror movie.]

            As an alternative to the “found footage” format, a “live broadcast” setting eliminates a fair number of the logical glitches about “who found this, who edited it,” and so forth.  One of the quintessential examples of this—aside from the radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” in 1938—is the famous (or notorious) BBC broadcast on Halloween night in 1992, Ghostwatch.  While the “live” aspect is most suited for electronic media (although even watching the taped version of Ghostwatch is still an eerie experience), one occasionally effective derivative of the “found footage” film is the faux-documentary: this format provides a framing story for the “real” footage and thus adds some logic and structure, but runs the risk of lessening suspense and audience involvement with the “story, ” since the implied “real-time” aspect of the footage has been eliminated.

            Another annoyingly illogical aspect of Paranormal Activity 3 is the wholly unbelievable ability of the protagonist to hang on to the camera and continue filming even when any sane human being would have stopped.  [Rec]2 and some other films got around this with helmet-mounted cameras, and the two prior Paranormal Activity movies were presented as surveillance camera (i.e., automatically recorded) footage.  PA3 has a lot of this, but there are numerous scenes in which someone grabs the camera and runs around with it.  Loud noises in another room?  Child is sick?  Loved ones in danger?  You’re in mortal danger?  Don’t forget to carry that camera with you!  Heaven forbid you put it down for a second.  Jerk. 

            To give PA3 faint praise: this time, they’ve flipped the familiar haunted-house trope from “the mother believes in the supernatural, but the father is stubbornly skeptical in spite of all the evidence.”  This time, it’s the husband who tries to convince his wife that “weird things are happening, bitch just look at the videos,” and she’s all, “oh no you kids stop believing in invisible friends who smack you around and move furniture it’s all in your mind.”  It’s refreshing to see this role reversal, although it doesn’t make the husband seem less of a creepy jerk, what with his obsessive, constant videotaping of his wife and step-daughters in their bedrooms.

            The aforementioned tiny adjustment doesn’t mean the “script” (10 bucks says it was scrawled on 2 or 3 paper napkins from Denny’s) is fresh, innovative, or even competent.  Did I mention: no character development, no plot, and … nothing happens?  And once again, a Paranormal Activity film looks a lot like a “Sunday Showcase of Homes” infomercial.  How does this family afford this house?  The husband “shoots wedding videos” for a living (not that we see him even doing that) and his mother-in-law makes a snide remark about him using his wife’s credit card to buy blank video tapes (so is the wife supposed to be independently wealthy or what?). 

            But I think my biggest problem with Paranormal Activity 3 is that this seems to be such a lazy film.  One gets the impression everyone involved said “meh, good enough” and went home.  A genuinely scary experience could have been crafted from an identical script, cast, setting, and technique—one which built suspense and unease, delivered a series of small shocks and false alarms followed by greater and greater scenes that would truly frighten audiences, leaving them drained and limp by the finale.  Maybe they wouldn’t feel the sort of existential fear that follows one home and keeps you awake, but at least they’d have the “jump out of your seat and scream, then anxiously await the next scary bit” type of filmgoing experience. 

            Paranormal Activity 3 doesn’t provide that sort of emotional rollercoaster ride—this is a dull, dull movie—and given the mountains of cash it’s been raking it, I don’t suppose the filmmakers of the next one will have any incentive to improve their craft.  It’s a shame, really.