"A house with annoying tenants"

Title: Paranormal Activity 3
Year: 2011
Genre: Horror
Director: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Writer: Christopher B. Landon, Oren Peli (characters)
Runtime: 85min
Cast: Chloe Csengery, Jessica Brown, Christopher Nicholas Smith
Produc.: Blumhouse Productions, Paramount Pictures
Budget: $5 million approx.

In Paranormal Activity 3 what the filmmakers basically did was to appeal to the simplest and viable way, as for the fans of its predecessors to be convinced to go for more.

In 2007 Oren Peli had introduced us to Katie (Featherston) and Micah (Sloat), fighting the demons of their haunted house. The film managed to be more economically profitable than expected (the most profitable, they say, in the history of Hollywood), which made clear that its producers were to want a sequel. Regarding how to continue with it, nor would it be so complicated. They just had to expand the family tree and give Katie a sister, a husband to that sister and dilemma solved. Now they had another couple to serve to demons as the main dish. From here they built a more or less similar structure to its predecessor and ready the chicken. However, I must acknowledge that in P.A.2 they were able to maintain the level of P.A. 1.

So here we would then have two films that promised suspense, surprise and some blood, and fulfilled with all the same. But above all, they had served with the box office. That's why a third one should not be kept waiting. Except that unlike its predecessors, among which there had been a margin of three years, only one would have to be waited to see the latter. In this case, to have a coherent argument they invented the sisters a past disturbing enough (with a feeling of Poltergeist, 1982), and for which the writers deserve the nod. Although, not so much the final product, as for their good intentions.

The way we get to know Katie and Kristy´s childhood is through VHS tapes with home movies, which one of them finds piled out. This is how we find out when the father of the girls had begun to hear strange noises in the house, and how he had chosen to install cameras in the style of Big Brother. All that we see this far works well and is believable enough. But with the difference that, while in the previous films the directors had been able to maintain constant tension and suspense, and with terrorized adult characters, being possessed and ending up killing each other, here that touch that should have kept us on the edge of our seats did not appear. On the contrary, what they thought would be to keep an ace up the sleeve, the addition of an upset grandmother that is part of a cult, never causes us the slightest fear, and instead, the whole movie is left as a fool. We are talking about something that, rather than an error, is a horror, miles away from the original ideal, where the root of fear lay in the conflict ".haunted house vs. actors."

Finally, the last detail in which Paranormal Activity 3 also fails is in the film’s resolution itself. For those who still remember how the 1st one ended, with Katie owned and motionless for a very long period of time, and in the 2nd one, with Daniel crazed and walking down stairs in the almost total darkness, I´ve just got to tell you that in the 3rd one you will not see anything like that. You do see some strong images, as a result of some very well achieved FX, but then you will soon see the closing credits, which is the same as saying that the demons do not attack the girls one last time to give them what they deserve, in an ending that is too simplistic.

My rating: 5/10

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