Weekly Review -- Hide and shriek

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) -- Ah yes, the found footage bonanza continues. Life goes on, the planet keeps spinning and things keep going bump in the night in the Paranormal Activity franchise. As I am writing this review, the fourth installment of the formerly indie series is already scaring up scores of fans around North America. Still, all is right in the world of horror, since the third entry is a deliciously creepy addition, delving into the origins of the haunting that has pestered the principal characters since childhood.

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS**

In 1988, Katie (Chloe Csengery) and Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) are your ordinary little girls that love toys, love camping, love driving their mother Julie (Lauren Bittner) crazy and, well... love talking to a demon. When their stepfather Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) catches sight of supernatural occurrences, he sets up cameras around the house. While Julie is not buying into the notion of a spectral being prancing around their home, Dennis tries to find out about the mysterious entity that Katie and Kristi have been communicating with, but the demon is not exactly fond of his curiosity...

Right off the bat, I will say that franchise newcomers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman do a fantastic job of building suspense. The story evolves from an ominous possibility -- what was that? -- to concrete video proof and, finally, to full-fledged terror. There are numerous tricks that contribute to the fear, not the least of which are the clever camerawork and script additions that might have merely served as gimmicks in lesser hands. I love, love, love the extremely innovative fan cam idea, an organic novelty that brings things to a new level of spookiness and generates some of the most effective scenes. Introducing the universal "imaginary friend" phenomenon is also a clever way to initially downplay the danger that the demonic force represents, only to slowly have it turn the family's life upside down. In fact, the screenplay is at its best when probing scares in the context of the family unit, contrasting the daily with the unearthly. I find that, in this sense, it hearkens to genre works like Poltergeist, showing the American dream with a wicked twist. Oh, and did I say that I loved the fan cam concept?

The one thing I did not particularly like was the coven element. The final ten minutes seemed tacked on and out of context, with the topic introduced and never explored. What happens to Katie and Kristi? Why did Paranormal Activity 2 not pay more attention to the family's history, considering all of the traumatic childhood events that had obviously taken place? Frankly, I was more interested in how the ending would tie into the story of the fire from the original film, but that question was never answered. On the other hand, the entire  curse theme is stunted both in this sequel and in the second one, but here it comes at the expense of the narrative's focus.

Paranormal Activity 3 is a chiller that ties in nicely with its predecessors, even if it is occasionally short on details and explanations. Through its mostly crafty writing and usage of technology, it links the characters to the apparition in an ingenious way while upping the fright ante by quite a few screams. This childhood game is truly not for the faint of heart.    

7/10