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Never take a picture of a ghost
"Paranormal Activity 3': What ghosts really want
Alaina Johns
My younger brother Brad and I make a dynamic horror movie team, not just because we're the only ones in our family willing to watch the Paranormal Activity films, but also because we're horrified by slightly different things. So when one of us can't look at the screen, the other is usually peeking. After the really scary parts, we confer in a whisper.
I was on board in 2009 when the original Paranormal Activity came out (although the friend who accompanied me walked out"“ all the wiggly hand-held camera work made her seasick before things even got scary).
In that original, a young couple begins to notice odd sounds in their attractive home. The man has an inordinate interest in technology and too much time on his hands. He feels compelled to document what's happening with cameras, especially after bedtime.
As if goaded by the cameras, the presence in the couple's home turns up the volume. A shadow appears on the door as they sleep. Disembodied footsteps thump in the nighttime hallway.
I was terrified right to the marrow by several scenes, including one where the couple spreads cornstarch on the floor at bedtime, only to find, the following morning, large three-toed footprints"“ as if the ghost is some kind of weighty, invisible demonic ostrich"“ leading right into the bedroom.
(Real ostrich feet may be marvels of evolution; they scare me nevertheless.)
Drawing the line at dogs
Unlike most horror films I've seen, Paranormal Activity actually gave me nightmares. I dreamt that I was stepping into my living room, where a man-sized shadow looked back at me. I immediately resolved to watch any and all sequels.
Paranormal Activity 2, the sequel, came out last year. I didn't watch it. To judge from the movie poster, a faithful dog senses a sinister presence. Since nobody seems to meet a good end in the Paranormal Activity franchise, I had to rule out the second film for the same reason that I avoid animal classics like Old Yeller.
This fall, Brad and I set out for the apparently dog-less Paranormal Activity 3.
It's a prequel of sorts to the first two films, set in 1988 and focusing on two young California girls (Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown), their pretty mother (Lauren Bittner) and her genial, mildly deadbeat live-in boyfriend (Christopher Nicholas Smith). It unfolds on the same potentially distracting premise as the first film: that the characters themselves are recording all the action (the movie also employs a silently oscillating camera that will give you ulcers).
Things get started as the boyfriend makes a solitary tour of the house with his video camera. A few muffled thumps are heard off-camera.
"It begins," Brad chortled quietly.
From creepy to sinister
Objects drop, papers flap and a child conducts nightly conversations with an invisible male friend who she insists is real. She flits through the house at night, and— in Paranormal Activity's trademark scare— is shown for hours on a time-lapse camera, staring at sleeping family members. Under directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, things slide expertly from creepy to sinister.
"There was something there! There was something there!" the boyfriend cries. Against his skeptical girlfriend's wishes, he covers the house in cameras, to view the presence and find out "what it wants." Watching the bizarre, unsettling occurrences, one of the characters insists, will somehow make sense of them.
Like playground bullies
Well, you know the old adage, "A watched pot never boils"? In Paranormal Activity 3's formula, the opposite holds true: This mysterious spirit seems to respond to an audience pretty much the way Bob Hope did.
Ultimately, the home-camera device grows tiresome, as we're expected to believe that an abjectly terrified man, hounded by ghostly phenomena and the mysterious disappearance of his companions, would creep through the house with a 1980s video camera on his shoulder.
But the idea that heightened surveillance would provoke a paranormal presence is somehow oddly comforting, because it suggests a practical solution: Perhaps paranormal spirits, like playground bullies, go away if you just ignore them.
I was on board in 2009 when the original Paranormal Activity came out (although the friend who accompanied me walked out"“ all the wiggly hand-held camera work made her seasick before things even got scary).
In that original, a young couple begins to notice odd sounds in their attractive home. The man has an inordinate interest in technology and too much time on his hands. He feels compelled to document what's happening with cameras, especially after bedtime.
As if goaded by the cameras, the presence in the couple's home turns up the volume. A shadow appears on the door as they sleep. Disembodied footsteps thump in the nighttime hallway.
I was terrified right to the marrow by several scenes, including one where the couple spreads cornstarch on the floor at bedtime, only to find, the following morning, large three-toed footprints"“ as if the ghost is some kind of weighty, invisible demonic ostrich"“ leading right into the bedroom.
(Real ostrich feet may be marvels of evolution; they scare me nevertheless.)
Drawing the line at dogs
Unlike most horror films I've seen, Paranormal Activity actually gave me nightmares. I dreamt that I was stepping into my living room, where a man-sized shadow looked back at me. I immediately resolved to watch any and all sequels.
Paranormal Activity 2, the sequel, came out last year. I didn't watch it. To judge from the movie poster, a faithful dog senses a sinister presence. Since nobody seems to meet a good end in the Paranormal Activity franchise, I had to rule out the second film for the same reason that I avoid animal classics like Old Yeller.
This fall, Brad and I set out for the apparently dog-less Paranormal Activity 3.
It's a prequel of sorts to the first two films, set in 1988 and focusing on two young California girls (Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown), their pretty mother (Lauren Bittner) and her genial, mildly deadbeat live-in boyfriend (Christopher Nicholas Smith). It unfolds on the same potentially distracting premise as the first film: that the characters themselves are recording all the action (the movie also employs a silently oscillating camera that will give you ulcers).
Things get started as the boyfriend makes a solitary tour of the house with his video camera. A few muffled thumps are heard off-camera.
"It begins," Brad chortled quietly.
From creepy to sinister
Objects drop, papers flap and a child conducts nightly conversations with an invisible male friend who she insists is real. She flits through the house at night, and— in Paranormal Activity's trademark scare— is shown for hours on a time-lapse camera, staring at sleeping family members. Under directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, things slide expertly from creepy to sinister.
"There was something there! There was something there!" the boyfriend cries. Against his skeptical girlfriend's wishes, he covers the house in cameras, to view the presence and find out "what it wants." Watching the bizarre, unsettling occurrences, one of the characters insists, will somehow make sense of them.
Like playground bullies
Well, you know the old adage, "A watched pot never boils"? In Paranormal Activity 3's formula, the opposite holds true: This mysterious spirit seems to respond to an audience pretty much the way Bob Hope did.
Ultimately, the home-camera device grows tiresome, as we're expected to believe that an abjectly terrified man, hounded by ghostly phenomena and the mysterious disappearance of his companions, would creep through the house with a 1980s video camera on his shoulder.
But the idea that heightened surveillance would provoke a paranormal presence is somehow oddly comforting, because it suggests a practical solution: Perhaps paranormal spirits, like playground bullies, go away if you just ignore them.
What, When, Where
Paranormal Activity 3. A film directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost. For Philadelphia-area show times, click here.
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