Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

Before the events of Paranormal Activity, there were the events of Paranormal Activity 2.

Long before the events of Paranormal Activity 2, there were the events of Paranormal Activity 3!

After a short introductory sequence culled from the beginning of Paranormal Activity 2, one that exists just so this entry can squeeze yet another Katie Featherston cameo into the increasingly convoluted back story, while also explaining where the footage is supposed to have come from this time, Paranormal Activity 3 goes back to 1988.

Katie (Chloe Csengery) and her younger sister Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) are just children.  Their mother, Julie (Lauren Bittner), has just allowed her Wedding Videographer boyfriend, Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith), to move in and, for a short while, all is sunshine and butterflies.

Then Kristi shares that she has an invisible friend named Toby.  Mom and Dennis begin to hear strange and unexplained noises around the house.  After an earthquake interrupts an attempt at a sex tape, the video camera captures something other worldly on video.

Dennis decides to keep recording the haunting, so he can document what is happening while he tries to figure out how and why it is happening.

The Paranormal Activity franchise manages to rebound somewhat nicely from the godawful second film with this collection of Halloween tricks and treats.  Most of the film's tricks are the usual Paranormal Activity movie stuff.  A video camera records what looks to be an empty room in the dead of night.  A low base humming begins on the soundtrack.  Strange noises are heard.  Footsteps stomp through the house.  Something knocks on the walls.  Doors open and/or close.  Lights turn on or off.  That kind of thing.

But the biggest trick of all turns out to be the film's advertising campaign.  Barely any of the footage that is shown in the trailers and commercials for the film is actually in the film.

Which brings me to the film's treats.  Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Catfish) manage to create several tense and frightening set pieces from Christopher Landon's derivative and over-written screenplay.  Set pieces that actually manage to make the movie worth sitting through, at least once.  The film's "Bloody Mary" sequence, which shares little to no resemblence whatsoever with the film's "Bloody Mary" teaser trailer, is arguably its most aggressively frightening sequence.  For a minute I forget that I was watching a prequel and actually thought the paranormal beast was going to off Kid Katie.

As good as I thought the "Bloody Mary" sequence was, my favorite part of the film involved the entity's subtle tormenting of a babysitter.  Joost and Schulman not only play off of the audience's expectations for a cheap jump scare, which they deliver, but they also put the constantly swinging back and forth point of view of the video camera to excellent use, capturing the paranormal beast's inventively mounted psychological attack on the babysitter with chilling subtlety.  Playing ghost with a white sheet won't seem quite as silly after seeing Paranormal Activity 3.

I don't know if it was my considerably lowered expectations going in, after getting burned by the awful second film my expectations could not have been any lower, but I found myself enjoying Paranormal Activity 3 for most of its running time.  But the movie lost me when it started going all Wicker Man on Julie and Dennis.  When that "surprise twist" started to unfold during the last half hour, I just rolled and averted my eyes and impatiently waited for the doomed characters to catch up with me, while I waited for the series inevitable Jump Scare Ending.

An inevitable Jump Scare Ending that, just like the Jump Scare Endings that concluded the first two films, screamed "THERE WILL BE A SEQUEL" at the audience.  The audience I saw Paranormal Activity 3 with did not seem to think that a Paranormal Activity 4 was all that necessary.

So do I.

Two stars out of four.

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) poster

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) trailer

Paranormal Activity 3 teaser

October is fast approaching, which means that it's Paranormal Activity time again, folks.

Okay, my knee jerk reaction to this teaser?  It just looks like more of the same, which, at this point in the franchise, is equal parts good and terrible.*  I like how the story is going back to the beginning of the haunting.  I also think that the "Blood Mary" sequence at the end of the teaser is an excellent example of how to do haunting horror right.

* Good because I liked the first film for what it was, and I was even man enough to own up to how the after effect of its primal "night terror" approach robbed me of a few good nights of sleep.  But I HATED the needlessly over-written second film.

Paranormal Activity 2: Toyko Night poster

 
From what I have heard, this sounds like a legit region specific sequel, wherein the original Paranormal Activity goes all Ringu/Ju-on (The Grudge) on several unfortunate viewers.  Could be worth a look.  Or maybe not.  Who knows, I don't.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

My review of the first Paranormal Activity praised that film for being "bluntly effective" in exploiting our collective fear of both the dark and of the unknown.  Paranormal Activity 2 is a bigger, louder, and even more blunt sequel that is nowhere near as effective in exploiting those very same fears.  In fact, it is not effective, at all.  The first movie managed to rob me of at least one good night's sleep, while the sequel had me struggling to stay awake.

 
The film introduces us to what at first appears to be an entirely new family.  One that has just been blessed with a darling baby boy, named Hunter.  Not too soon after they bring Hunter home, the family begins to suffer from the same dreaded nocturnal knocking and pinging that Katie and Micah did in the first film.  But then it is revealed that Hunter's mother is actually Katie's sister.  It is also revealed that both Katie and Micah are alive!  Paranormal Activity 2 is a logic defying prequel, not a sequel.  The events of this film take place just prior to the events of the first film, although these events were never mentioned in the first film.  Why is that?  Easy, they never happened.

Paranormal Activity at least had the novelty of being a rather unique viewing experience.  It was a haunting movie that actually played by the "real life" rules of "actual" hauntings, rather than the special effects driven "reel life" rules of the movies.  Paranormal Activity 2 has no such novelty.  In fact, it is a pedestrian example of the "reel life" rules of the movies in action.   All of its major set pieces are taken from other, far better, films.  The most obvious being the penultimate battle to save Hunter from his demonically possessed mother, a sequence that is lifted directly from the Spanish "found footage" supernatural thriller [Rec].

I knew I was in trouble when, curious as to just how much character building filler I had been watching, I checked my watch and was dismayed to find that the film was reaching the point where it would be setting up for the dreaded Final Night.  Then I realized that I had just checked my watch!  Never a good sign.

Another bad sign was when, during all the thumping and running and screaming and crossing waving that was happening a few minutes later, I had to force myself from shouting at the screen: "Just take the little kid already, so I can go home!"

One star out of four.

Paranormal Activity 2 teaser

The first Paranormal Activity was relatively successful at tapping into some very primal fears.  While it was by no means a classic, it was nonetheless a creepy "little" flick.  Whether or not the quickie sequel will manage to pull off the same trick remains to be seen.

Primal fear and Paranormal Activity

In the last few years I have managed to whittle down my description of the horror genre to a very simply and almost universal sounding general truth: "The horror genre dramatizes or explores the fear, or terror, that results when the irrational intrudes upon the rational."

Stephen King described that very same thing, albeit it in a better illustrated manner, thirty-one plus years ago, in his foreword to his book Night Shift:

"At night, when I go to bed, I am still at pains to be sure that my legs are under the blanket after the lights go out.  I'm not a child any more but... I don't like to sleep with one leg sticking out.  Because if a cool hand ever reached out from under the bed and grasped my ankle, I might scream.  Yes, I might scream to wake the dead.  That sort of thing doesn't happen, of course, and we all know that.  In the stories that follow you will encounter all manner of night creatures; vampires, demon lovers, a thing that lives in the closet, all sorts of other terrors.  None of them are real.  The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real.  I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle."

I am much the same way.  I also suffer from the same semi-irrational fear.  My adult mind knows that my and, more than likely, King's collective fear is rooted in the dread of having an actual intruder attack while we are asleep, when we are unaware of the danger that looms over us.  Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity's writer and director, understands this perfectly, for he enacts that familiar to us all nightmare scenario of something grabbing an exposed foot and yanking someone out of bed while she sleeps with gooseflesh inducing power in his film.  That scene, and the ones before it, as well as the final one that followed it, are nothing more than our most primal nightmares brought to life.

I understood that intellectually, when driving to the theater last night.  I knew that I would be seeing those primal fears of the dark and the unknown played out as entertainment.  Like King, I knew that what I would be seeing was not real (and, being an atheist, I do not believe that "paranormal activity" itself is real) but I was uneasy about seeing the film.  I was afraid, you see, that it would have a negative effect on me beyond simply getting me to the edge of my seat and nervously anticipating the moment when the next jump scare would explode out of the sound system.

Because, as I said, I suffer from Night Terrors.  A sleep disorder that causes me to snap awake in terror shortly after falling to sleep.  Sometimes I just snap awake.  Other times I grab my fiance and repeatedly ask her if she is all right.

And sometimes I wake up screaming my throat raw, leap out of bed, and try to escape whatever it is that mind think is attacking me.

My fear going into Paranormal Activity was that it would strike the Night Terror nerve, and it did.  Watching the movie, at times, was like watching some of my worst episodes happening to other people.  I lost a night's sleep worrying about whether or not I would have an episode, which brings my line of thought back to the film's title.  

It was once believed that nightmares were caused by assorted demons (their names are legion, you know) tormenting some poor unfortunate soul.  Many still believe that to be true.  I do not.  I just cannot buy Ultimate Evil doing the psychological equivalent of sneaking up behind me and going, "BOO!"  I mean, I expect more out of Ultimate Evil than some stomping footsteps in the night.  In the dark.  When I am asleep.  Is Ultimate Evil a six year old?

But as I lay in bed alone last night (the fiance is out of town this weekend, hence my night out at the horror show) I worried about having an episode to the point of getting angry.  I eventually fell asleep and woke up this morning without incident.  Unless I had one and just don't remember it.  That happens, a lot.

Although my critical assessment of Paranormal Activity remains unchanged (while it is certainly an unnerving viewing experience, it is also not very "good" as an actual film) I nonetheless have to tip my hat to Oren Peli for making me fearful of going to sleep last night.  Even if it was not quite the way he intended.

Until next time, pleasant dreams...?

 

Paranormal Activity (2009)

What makes Paranormal Activity, the horror genre's current "little movie that could" box office darling, such a bluntly effective thrill ride, is its makers complete and utter understanding of H.P. Lovecraft's famous statement, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Paranormal Activity invokes that fear in a series of well staged scenes that not only play on our collective fear of the dark, and of the strange noises that can rattle through a house in the dead of night, but also the chilling concept that something horrible might be happening around us while we are sound asleep in bed.  A time when we are as helpless as a newborn and utterly unable to defend ourselves from whatever is slithering towards us out of the shadows of nightmare.

A young couple (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, playing characters that share their real life names) suspect that they are being plagued by the titular activity and have decided to document their haunting by filming it.  They also consult with a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) that warns them that what is happening is very dangerous (I don't think that it is a spoiler to say that the activity is the result of a demon that "wants" Katie) and that they should not do anything whatsoever to encourage contact.  That would only agitate the entity and escalate the activity.  Micah scoffs at the advice and not only continues filming, but also tries to make the very contact that the psychic warned them not to.  A considerable amount of agitation and activity escalation result.

As I said, Paranormal Activity is bluntly effective and it appeared to scare the living bejesus out of several audience members at the screening I attended.  Good for them.  It's almost Halloween and everyone is entitled to at least one good scare.  The most I got out of it, however, were some choice moments of tension rooted in that deliciously creepy dread of what might come next, but nothing more heart pounding than that.

Two and a half stars out of four.