Staff Writer
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| Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures |
When the first trailers started surfacing, I was irrationally excited. I was promised scenes involving flying furniture, mothers being pulled back into the darkness by invisible forces and a shadowy figure in a mirror after a brief game of Bloody Mary. Most of all, I was promised more information about the supernatural lives of Katie and Kristi.
I got enough heart-pounding scares to leave the lights on when I got to bed tonight, but not enough information to fill the plot holes in my head. “Paranormal Activity 3” is an amazing movie…if you have never seen part one and two and don’t mind random information being made up on the spot.
We can all agree that 99.99 percent of the reason why we were all excited to watch “Paranormal Activity 3” was because of the images shown on the trailer. I cannot be the only one who was excited to see what looks like a medium get his head slammed into a dining room table then get thrown backwards by some invisible force.
The trailer also showed who we assume is Katie and Kristi’s mother getting pulled back like a rag doll, the infamous fire that destroyed their childhood home and the wonderfully bone-chilling scene where Katie throws a full cup of water at an invisible figure and you swear you can hear a sizzle before random objects in the girls’ room begins to fly everywhere.This is the part where I tell you all to cover your ears or play Quiet Riot insanely loud if you haven’t seen the movie yet. It’s spoiler time.
We start the movie with a flashback. Apparently, before Katie moved to her home with Micah, she stored some boxes full of old family videos at her beloved sister Kristi’s house. Then we learn that that box was the only thing stolen during the “break-in” in “Paranormal Activity 2.”
Suddenly, the old home videos begin. Note: you never figure out who exactly is playing, fast-forwarding and rewinding said video tapes. First one we see is of Katie’s birthday party. Here we learn that Katie and Kristi’s parents are divorced, and they are living with their mother Julie and her new husband Dennis. From the get-go we are told that Kristi has an imaginary friend named Toby. Toby and Kristi are best friends and because she’s so young, possibly around five or six (they never specify), nobody cares enough to ask questions about him.
The paranormal activity starts right away. There is grace period of about a week or so where nothing happens and we feel like we are watching the family version of “The Real World.” Immediately Dennis stations cameras all over the house, all the while following his family with his hand-held, after he begins to hear suspicious noises.
Throughout the movie you witness a game of Bloody Mary gone wrong, though it is not the scene we had all seen in the trailers, and poor Katie being tortured by Toby because he apparently favors Kristi. We also see him pick on the baby-sitter and send her running for the hills as soon as Julie and Dennis come home from their night out. The major scene in the movie is with Julie in the kitchen. The events that take place here finally convince her that there is something evil living in her house. I won’t go into more detail; you’ll have to experience the fright for yourselves.
As the movie goes on, we are immersed in terrifying scenes that have us peeking at the screen from between our fingers, but none of them are the creepy scenes from the trailer that made us want to watch the movie in the first place. They’re the events that take place toward the end of the movie, at grandma’s house to be exact, that make you start scratching your head searching for answers to the many unanswered questions you have.
Julie’s mother doesn’t like Dennis. He has very little money and apparently has convinced Julie not to have the baby boy she once wanted. But after Julie witnessed the paranormal activity firsthand she has no other choice but to leave her infested house and stay with her mother.
Julie and Dennis are sleeping when they hear noises, car doors slamming and women’s voices, coming from within the house. Julie goes to investigate and is gone for so long Dennis decides to go looking for her. What he finds are satanic symbols decorating grandma’s walls, a group of elderly woman in all black chanting around a bonfire and his beloved Julie suspended in mid-air above the stairs, lifeless.
Turns out grandma is a witch, not a nice one like Glinda but a bad one like Maleficent, worshipping Satan and what not. Grandma apparently sent Toby to befriend Kristi, play with her and make her promise to give him her firstborn son. You know the usual. There’s even a scene with Kristi dressed as a bride with grandma fixing her veil, getting ready to apparently marry Toby.
Toby then possesses Katie and uses her to attack Dennis. While he’s wounded on the floor, grandma pops up, takes the now un-possessed Katie’s hand as Toby bends Dennis’s spine back, killing him and leaving him next to Julie’s dead body.
The movie ends with Grandma, Katie and Kristi walking up the stairs hand in hand. The very last line being, “Come girls, time to get ready.” Ready for what? A wedding? A sacrifice? The Mambo? Needless to say, the ending leaves you unsatisfied.
There are many questions that you are left with at the end. We understand it’s a prequel but so was part two and we still got caught up. So, what happened to Katie and Hunter? What happened to the huge fire that was supposedly caused by the paranormal activity surrounding the girls childhood? Why don’t the girls remember witnessing their parents being murdered? Why don’t they remember their satanic grandmother?
Didn’t they mention a little something about Hunter being captured because of some demonic pact one of Kristi’s ancestors made for financial wealth? What happened to that? I would like to know who decided to deviate away from that perfectly solid plot and bring in the satanic coven of elderly witches.
The previous two Paranormal Activities fit together seamlessly, and part three was supposed to explain why those two particular girls were chosen. It was supposed to be another seamless fit. Part three will be entertaining for those who have never seen the previous two.
The movie is rich in extreme horror and goose bump inducing moments that will leave you watching your back in the dark. But what the movie makes up for in scares, it lacks in sufficient plot details to glue together all three films. Watch the movie, love the fear, just ignore the story and you’ll be fine.
