For the love of things that go bump in the night, a trifecta of spooky home videos has now been assembled with the arrival of a third Paranormal Activity instalment. A former teenager in love with films like Poltergeist (1982) and The Entity (1982), I’m now predisposed, it seems, to looking favourably upon films about malevolent spirits.
Delving into the youth of Katie, the young woman pursued by a force with a personal vendetta in Oren Peli’s box-office smashing original, we’re shuttled back in time via the diminishing glory of VHS to the first signs of activity in her life.
Put together in haste presumably to cash in on the now franchise’s profitability and handed to the directors of excellent but dubious documentary Catfish (2010), Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, this proves to be the trilogy’s high point to date.
The relative naturalism of the performances is impressive considering the low-grade aesthetic and commercial pressures. The necessity of a man needing to film every moment of his life, even at the most stressful, inappropriate times, may gel less with the same notion of naturalism but then, we’d have no film without it.
By now the filmmakers know there’s little point in padding the first act with exposition. The noose begins relaxed but is slowly tightened, the chills nimbly spaced. The film’s stroke of genius comes from the use of a camera strapped to an oscillating fan which allows coverage for two rooms. Torturous moments of tension are realised by this deceptively simple employment of the slowly whirring device; every second of anticipation allows visions of what will enter the frame to fester in our imagination.
Katie’s young sister Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) is the point of entry, her imaginary friend the initial focus of parental consternation before the weird stuff begins to escalate. There’s a cunning perversion in the way this defensive psychological trait, denoting a common symptom of childhood isolation, gets transformed into an outlet for unleashing the sinister into the lives of all.
The ending is genuinely unnerving, with echoes of Suspiria (1977) and The Blair Witch Project (1999). Many will feel the formula has worn thin already but with so few, if any, genre films able to provoke a nervous laugh, mild heart palpitation or embarrassingly loud swallow out of audiences these days, something this effective deserves to win plaudits for delivering on its expectations.
I say:
A very familiar Method of Operation by now but still a hugely enjoyable ride.
See it for:
About half a dozen moments of genuine fright.
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