Other Movie Review
The Three Musketeers (2011) Paranormal activity 3 Margin call movie
Martha Marcy May Marlene Johnny English Reborn 'Oranges and Sunshine
The Three Musketeers (2011) Paranormal activity 3 Margin call movie
Martha Marcy May Marlene Johnny English Reborn 'Oranges and Sunshine
With Lauren Bittner, Katie Featherston. Prequel to the horror series of a possessed young woman and her family. Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman (1:24). R: Language, sexuality. At area theaters.
A few really weird things happen during "Paranormal Activity 3," though unfortunately, they have nothing to do with being frightened.
First, this latest entry in the popular "found-footage" horror series makes a decision early on to reduce Katie Featherston — who was memorably pursued, and then possessed, by a demon in the 2009 and 2010 "Paranormal" editions — to a cameo.
Has Katie grown bored with being "the evil chick" in these homegrown creepouts? Perhaps a subsequent film will reveal the truth. For now, her presence is missed.
Additionally, and more alarmingly, with this film the "Paranormal" flicks succumb to self-parody, though it wasn't a far fall. Still, when audience members are hollering for a video-obsessed guy to "put the camera down!" as he's running around a house, perhaps it's time to rethink the gimmick.
Here, the most photographed family on record — sorry, Kardashians — are shown in September 1988, when the California home of grade-school age Katie (Chloe Cserngey), her sister Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) and their mom, Julie (Lauren Bittner), first comes under siege from things that go bump in front of the lens.
Julie's new husband, Daniel (Brian Boland), is the first to notice that doors slam and things clunk whenever the girls talk to their imaginary friend "Tobey."
We never see Tobey, but Kristie says he's tall — apparently, tall enough to bump into hanging lights — and at one point, some dust falls onto his shape, revealing an ethereal stovepipe hat. Did the kid mean "Abe," as in Lincoln?
Anyway, Dennis sets up cameras everywhere, as people tend to do in these movies, with his big innovation being a rotating camera jerry-rigged to an oscillating fan, so we keep moving left, right and left again. When directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman use that view, it's as if the whole word is saying "no."
Which maybe Joost and Schulman ("Catfish") ought to have said, too.
There are only so many times bodies can be dragged out of frame and tables levitated before the biggest scare of all is the threat of tedium. There's backstory to how Tobey is summoned to the girls' house — let’s just say
Grandma has some 'splaining to do — but most of the scares come via idiots popping their heads into frame and saying "Got ya, Dennis!"
The sense of dread that permeated the first "Paranormal Activity" — with its head-spinning moment of cloven footprints appearing, thanks to a pile of baking soda — is gone. Now the payoffs are minimal; once, a grossout is delivered thanks to, no kidding, a youngster's loose tooth.
Yet the most excruciating wait is for the return of Featherston, whose presence, it turns out, is crucial to the franchise. Her brief appearance sets off our alarm bells (she was a crib-threatening possessee last time out), and it's a hoot to see her arch an eyebrow and revel in her power as the face of the "Paranormal" world.
A few really weird things happen during "Paranormal Activity 3," though unfortunately, they have nothing to do with being frightened.
First, this latest entry in the popular "found-footage" horror series makes a decision early on to reduce Katie Featherston — who was memorably pursued, and then possessed, by a demon in the 2009 and 2010 "Paranormal" editions — to a cameo.
Has Katie grown bored with being "the evil chick" in these homegrown creepouts? Perhaps a subsequent film will reveal the truth. For now, her presence is missed.
Additionally, and more alarmingly, with this film the "Paranormal" flicks succumb to self-parody, though it wasn't a far fall. Still, when audience members are hollering for a video-obsessed guy to "put the camera down!" as he's running around a house, perhaps it's time to rethink the gimmick.
Here, the most photographed family on record — sorry, Kardashians — are shown in September 1988, when the California home of grade-school age Katie (Chloe Cserngey), her sister Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) and their mom, Julie (Lauren Bittner), first comes under siege from things that go bump in front of the lens.
Julie's new husband, Daniel (Brian Boland), is the first to notice that doors slam and things clunk whenever the girls talk to their imaginary friend "Tobey."
We never see Tobey, but Kristie says he's tall — apparently, tall enough to bump into hanging lights — and at one point, some dust falls onto his shape, revealing an ethereal stovepipe hat. Did the kid mean "Abe," as in Lincoln?
Anyway, Dennis sets up cameras everywhere, as people tend to do in these movies, with his big innovation being a rotating camera jerry-rigged to an oscillating fan, so we keep moving left, right and left again. When directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman use that view, it's as if the whole word is saying "no."
Which maybe Joost and Schulman ("Catfish") ought to have said, too.
There are only so many times bodies can be dragged out of frame and tables levitated before the biggest scare of all is the threat of tedium. There's backstory to how Tobey is summoned to the girls' house — let’s just say
Grandma has some 'splaining to do — but most of the scares come via idiots popping their heads into frame and saying "Got ya, Dennis!"
The sense of dread that permeated the first "Paranormal Activity" — with its head-spinning moment of cloven footprints appearing, thanks to a pile of baking soda — is gone. Now the payoffs are minimal; once, a grossout is delivered thanks to, no kidding, a youngster's loose tooth.
Yet the most excruciating wait is for the return of Featherston, whose presence, it turns out, is crucial to the franchise. Her brief appearance sets off our alarm bells (she was a crib-threatening possessee last time out), and it's a hoot to see her arch an eyebrow and revel in her power as the face of the "Paranormal" world.
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