Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

I have odd feelings of the entire Paranormal Activity series. The first movie is absolutely terrible. I hate it, it’s got the most absolutely annoying characters, and I just wanted to punch both of them. Also, there were about two good scares in the film, and with the ratio of 2 good scares per 90 minutes, that is bad. With the usual good horror film, at 90 minutes, you have probably from 15-20 really good scares. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you think about it, getting absolutely terrified roughly 17 times is a very good thing, and especially when the really good scares take about 2-3 minutes for exposition. And about that scare count is what makes Paranormal Activity 2 and Paranormal Activity 3 both really good horror movies (not great. You have to be special to be a great horror movie), and much better films than the first film that made the series so dang popular. But, while this movie is not as scary as the second one is, this is still a very scary movie, and I think it a very scary movie. Directed by the two who directed the “docu-drama” Catfish, which I was not a fan of, this movie takes place in 1988, featuring the sisters Katie and Kristi from movies 1 and 2 at a very young age, where they are being filmed by their mother’s new husband who films weddings, so he is filming everything that happens in their house when they find strange happenings revolving around Kristi talking to her “imaginary” friend Toby (the name given to the ghost-I will never see this ghost as anything else, like when I named the demon from Insidious Frank). The thing that works in the first hour or so of the film is when there are 3-minute stretches of complete silence freaking you out until something pops out, and then the movie goes completely insane. For about the last 15-20 minutes, it goes completely insane. It is so insane (but still scary) that it almost goes against what the first hour did so greatly. There is a lot of it that raises a lot of questions, and a lot of them are really making not a single clue what-so-ever, and you have to wonder-“why don’t they remember ANY of this?” I don’t want to go into spoilers here, because I don’t want there to even be tempted for someone to know the end on my behalf, because you just have to see it. You have to see it for the scares, and if you’ve seen any of the other movies in the series, you will want answers to some of the more unexplained questions, because by the time they’re done terrorizing this family, with every found-footage excuse possible, we are going to have a really good universe, one that is scary, fascinating, and if they keep it up, forgiving of the first movie.
8/10