Well, at least these movies have been trending in the right direction. By the time Paranormal Activity 6 rolls around they might actually be scary. Because, let's face it: the first one was scary for about two minutes. A door opening is not scary. Flour on the floor is not scary. Micah, while not scary, was an asshole. Also, nobody knew how to pronounce his name correctly. It could've been scarier, but they decided to ruin the ending in the trailer. A-whoops!
But while the scare quotient is heading the right way, the time period is hightailing it the other direction. I know that prequels have become more of a trend recently, but do we really need a prequel of a prequel? This is really going to confuse the kids when they go to the local video rental establishment or online digital video streaming service searching for the newest in all things boogeyman. For all his faults, at least George Lucas was smart enough to postdate the Star Wars movies so they're numerically correct with regards to the passage of time.
To help with any confusion, I've constructed a handy timeline to figure out what the hell is going on:
Make any sense to you? Me neither. Why did the filmmakers decide to jump back in time yet again? Because they're idiots.
Take a look at the new footage shown in the trailer. Just look at it. Aside from some artificial snow and grain the talentless editor added during postproduction, the picture quality is just as good as was presented in the first movie. Which, if you'll recall, was shot on a consumer-grade (albeit high-end) digital video camera. Where do you suppose two young girls got a digital video camera in 1988? Assuming that this movie won't feature time travel as a prominent subplot, their daddy must've purchased something that looks like this:
And the footage shot from said camera would look something like this:
Even if the footage was found later and transferred over to a DVD, it would still look something like this:
Somehow, though, this family was able to record their exploits with a camera that recorded VHS footage of the same quality of high-end digital videos taken 20 years later.
What really hurts these presequels is that the premise for even having the footag in the first place is becoming more and more contrived. The fact that Micah -- after having spent too much money on a camera he didn't need -- would want to record every moment of his dull life is completely believable. He was, after all, a douchebag. But consider Paranormal Activity 2: in order to have a reason to be able to see what happens to the family, the writer decided to have their house ransacked at the beginning of the film (it's implied that the ransacking was done by the demon. Try and wrap your head around that one). The family's completely implausible response is to install video cameras covering every inch of living space. What, exactly, will that do to prevent your house from being invaded again? Sure, they could've installed what we in the business call "locks," or invested in a high-tech security system, but those behaviors wouldn't fit with the warped sense of character psychology being applied to the movie.
So now in Paranormal Activity 3 we're supposed to believe that a couple of small children are able to properly maneuver, set up, and operate a camcorder?
Speaking of which, how old are these girls? The oldest is what, ten? Twelve? Her sister's even younger. There's no way these kids are using that camcorder. There's also no way they're actually playing Bloody Mary, even if it is a ruse by the older girl to scare her sister. And I hope they don't try and make this Bloody Mary thing into any kind of major or minor plot point, because I've seen that before, and it didn't turn out well.
And what's that supposed demonic presence supposed to be in the background? Bloody Mary? Noob Saibot? John Cena's mystery opponent?
Actually, any one of those will probably be scarier than what's actually in the movie.
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