I woke up on Thursday morning, alarm clock blasting and it was 107.7 the End talking about the new horror movie that was coming out this weekend. Apparently, it was the third of a movie series going on about paranormal activity. I didn’t pay much attention to it as I grudgingly slammed the snooze button on the alarm. Driving to school that day I also heard on the radio again that a new movie called Paranormal Activity 3 was debuting this weekend and it was supposed to be a hit. I slowly started to recall the previous films of the series which received high praises for engrossing large amounts of money on such low budgets. I remembered how I had trouble sleeping and the eerie feeling I was being watched while I was sleeping. I got chills run down my back just thinking about how the third film might turn out, and instantly I was captivated into going to the premier. The announcer was talking about how the first movie was filmed in only a week and had a 15,000$ budget but produced over 194 million dollars worldwide. I could only imagine what they would do with this film which had an 8 million dollar budget, the possibilities were endless. The films were based on the story surrounding Katie Featherston, (which is her name in real life) and her interactions with a paranormal entity. The third film was about the lives of Katie and her younger sister Kristi, and their experiences dealing with the entity. I planned to go to the midnight show with a bunch of friends, and the adrenaline was already kicking in when I was bought the tickets for the show.
Reviews were somewhere on the extremes, either you really liked the movie or you thought it was complete garbage. Rotten Tomatoes gave it an average rating of 6.1/10 through critics, and a 3.8/5 for the general audience. Even though it didn’t get the best ratings in the world, it was still easily the most money making movie to premier this weekend. A lot of critics refer to the Paranormal Activity series as the Saw killers. What they mean by this is that the general horror movie in the past 5 years has been about blood and guts, and how a psychotic serial killer decides to kidnap you and put you through obstacles to see if your worthy of living. While numerous individuals thought this was entertaining, not a lot of people could connect and identify with the film, as they could with Paranormal Activity 3.
The movie overall delivered a terrifying performance, but it didn’t seem to be much different than the prior movies. There were scenes that just petrified me, and one of my friends even started praying in the middle of the movie. After the film I found out that the movie made 54 million dollars on its opening weekend, which completely obliterated any other opening movies that weekend. Paranormal Activity 3 made the most money opening weekend since Planet of the Apes came out, which made 54.8 million, except that movie had a 94 million dollar budget cut.
The setting is in a typical everyday house and how out of the ordinary things seem to take place when everyone goes to bed. Everyone has once thought what might be happening around them while unconscious, but Dennis, (Katie and Kristi’s mother’s boyfriend) decides to start putting up cameras throughout the house. What have people learned from the previous films? That crazy, unexplainable occurrences take place once someone thinks it’s a good idea to start putting cameras all over the place. This all started because in the beginning of the film, an earthquake occurs and dust falls off the ceiling and it seems as if it falls onto an invisible figure. Then, all of a sudden Kristi has a new best friend, whose name happens to be Toby. She’s such good friends with him that she sometimes gets up in the middle of the night just to converse with him, often times leading into arguments. This would be all fine and dandy, except for the fact that Toby is imaginary, and a lot of odd things seemed to start happening once he came into the picture. As the movie went on, I saw how real Kristi thought Toby was, often not being able to answer her parents pleading questions because she says, “Toby won’t let me! Why don’t you just ask him yourself! He’s right there!?!”
One thing that seemed to bug me about the movie was how this suburb guy in the 80’s could afford to have 5 cameras, which were all pretty decent size. I’m not familiar with how much the average camera cost back in those days, but if it’s similar to prices now, then how would he have enough money to purchase all those cameras just to catch on film what he thinks is a ghost?
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