Paranormal Activity Twee!
Oct. 30th, 2011 03:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorhathorI mentioned the other night that I got to see Paranormal Activity 3. Wherever I can, I avoid paying movie theatre prices because they're just too damn high; I somehow managed to see it through the kindness of a magic little bird. ;) That's all I'll say about that. It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was pretty damn cool. Like the other movies, it did spook me enough to disturb my sleep for one night, but that's about it. It was more "Oh, COOL!" and suspenseful than "scar you for life" with how scary it is.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
One quote they used on one of the commercials was from a review that said "the last fifteen minutes will mess you up for life." I'd say that's going too far. Ringu/The Ring? Yes, they messed me up for life. There was just something about the ending of these movies that totally crossed a line that hadn't been crossed in a movie before, at least for me. The whole concept digs right into my psyche and won't let go. There's something about how the premise is done that made it seem so possible. Paranormal Activity, though, I don't know. You would think the idea of finding out you live in a haunted house would be more plausible to me than watching a tape that has a death curse on it, but for some reason, it's not. I guess because when I watch the PA movies, I always identify more with the person who wants to tape the phenomena than the person who whines about how the cameras are causing the trouble. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be terrified if that shit was happening in my house, but I'd be voraciously curious to tape it and watch it back later at the same time. It always seems that the person who wants to tape the phenomena is characterized as the bad guy, which puts me off a bit.
Another reason why the PA movies don't scare me as much as the Ringu series is because the concepts explored in PA are never used to their full potential, and that's a real shame. PA 3 is a perfect example of this. There were several scenes in the trailers that were cut out of the final movie. In fact, almost the entire trailer is never seen in the movie. Call me disappointed! Several of those clips looked really cool! Now, what was left WAS pretty damn good, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help but wonder when Kristi was going to throw the water on the demon and so on.
Before I get into it, I'll identify the main characters so the review isn't confusing to those who haven't seen the movie yet. Julie is Katie and Kristi's mother, Dennis is her boyfriend (they don't come out and say what happened to K2's father; maybe they're divorced or he died?), Katie and Kristi are the two little girls. Teddy Ruxpin as Himself.
The good stuff
- They made a very strong effort to make the movie really look like it was taking place in 1988. From the babysitter's totally 80's skirt to the use of Teddy Ruxpin, and the fact that there were mirrored closet doors all over the freakin' house, it was a very 80's-looking movie. Oh, and of course Dennis's equipment - big clunky video cameras and 6 hour video tapes!
Who else thought Teddy Ruxpin was fucking creepy? Close your beak-like mouth, Teddy.
- The little girl who played Kristi was so cute and a pretty decent little actress.
- Dennis and Randy's idea of using the swivel fan base to make a swiveling camera. That was really cool. What they did was remove most of the fan parts and mount a camera on the base so it could swivel back and forth while it was filming. That way, it could get the living room/dining room, then the kitchen, over and over all night. Can't you just see the awesome potential for this idea in terms of what the camera could capture? Now, I don't think they used this as much as they should have; there were things I would have done that they simply didn't do. Because the camera is swiveling, you could have some sort of creepy entity sneaking up on someone, and each time the camera swivels back, you see the entity get closer and closer. Wouldn't that have been cool??? I think so.
They did, however, do two really cool things with the swivel camera. What makes Julie finally admit that there is something paranormal happening in the house is someone knocks on the door and she goes to answer it, but there's no one there. When she goes back to the kitchen, everything is gone. Items sitting on the counters, the pots and pans, knick-knacks, the phone, even the kitchen table! A second later, all of these items fall off the ceiling and crash to the floor. O_O
WICKED...
The other thing they did with the swivel camera is my favorite scene in the whole movie. Julie and Dennis leave the girls with a babysitter and go out for the evening. Katie says she wants to hear a ghost story, so the babysitter puts a sheet over her head and pretends to be a ghost.
FYI: The picture below is about 2.5MBs, so it'll take a little longer to download than the usual pic. Although, with today's internet, it'll still probably be only a few seconds, heh. It isn't DVD quality since the movie didn't come off a DVD, but it's not that bad. Also, the scene moves normally in the actual movie. This wasn't capped frame by frame, which is why the movement is choppy. You should still be able to get the gist of it.
A little later, the babysitter sits down at the kitchen table to do her homework. The camera swivels back and forth a couple times and then, you see this:
Okay, that was AWESOME. If it happened to me, I'd be creeped all to hell. But catching it on camera and just watching it would be NEAT. Creeeeeepy.
- The Bloody Mary scene with Randy was all kinds of tense and cool. If that happened to me, I'd be shaking too.
- I usually hate jump scares. They're just so pointless. But I actually liked both the jump scares they did here because they made sense. Julie and then the babysitter were playing jokes on Dennis, and they were both good and pretty funny. So I liked that.
The bad stuff
- As I mentioned, many awesome scenes from the trailer were not used.
- They contradicted several things Katie said in PA and PA 2 about what the demonic experience was like when they were kids. Several things that should have been there were left out. Clearly they were going to end the movie with their house burning down like Katie said it did (one of the TV spots has a burning house in it), but it ended differently. Of course, the house burning down could have happened later, sometime after this movie, but the fire seemed like the natural ending since they were telling the story of what happened with the demon the first time.
- It was ambiguous whether Julie made it out of the movie alive. Somehow she had to only be unconscious because there are too many references made to her in PA that indicate she is still alive. I highly doubt Micah would make jokes to Katie that "we shouldn't let your mother come over anymore" if she was dead! How insensitive would that be?
- I didn't think it made sense that Katie would inherit a box of video tapes that are labeled with stuff like "Katie's birthday 1988" and yet, she never watched them. The woman lost everything she owned from her childhood, including family pictures, in a house fire. Anyone in that situation would get a VCR and watch every last tape as soon as possible, just to have that little bit of their childhood memories back. The tapes just sat in Kristi's basement for over a year? I call no way.
- The swiveling camera wasn't nearly used to its full potential. Not even close. Not that they didn't have two really awesome scenes with it, but there was SO much more they could have done.
- Julie being such a moron got on my nerves. There is no ghost/demon, your cameras are what's making the girls scared! Idiot. If someone tells you they've got compelling footage that could convince you there's a ghost in your house, you WATCH it. I get that the woman was in denial, but that didn't make her any less annoying.
- Julie going downstairs for a midnight snack and a light exploding isn't scary. Use your damn awesome idea to its full potential instead of giving us lame scenes like that with no payoff.
- And what was with that scene anyway? You're worried about noise waking up your daughters so you go downstairs and run the *garbage disposal* at 1AM?
- A couple months ago, I watched Paranormal Entity and it gave me a few ideas of things that they could have done to make certain scenes scarier. One was to have a ghost/invisible entity stalking someone in their bed where it looks like there's a figure under the covers with them, and then the sheet falls away and there's no one there. As you can see, they did something very much like this in PA 3. Now when I use it in a story, people will say I'm ripping off PA 3, but I'm really not because I got this idea before the movie even came out. They didn't do anything like that in Paranormal Entity. It bothers me when stuff like that happens. Oh well. I guess they've done similar things in other movies (Ju-on), and it's not something I should make a big deal about.
I think that's all I wanted to say. If I think of anything else, I'll add it. :)
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
One quote they used on one of the commercials was from a review that said "the last fifteen minutes will mess you up for life." I'd say that's going too far. Ringu/The Ring? Yes, they messed me up for life. There was just something about the ending of these movies that totally crossed a line that hadn't been crossed in a movie before, at least for me. The whole concept digs right into my psyche and won't let go. There's something about how the premise is done that made it seem so possible. Paranormal Activity, though, I don't know. You would think the idea of finding out you live in a haunted house would be more plausible to me than watching a tape that has a death curse on it, but for some reason, it's not. I guess because when I watch the PA movies, I always identify more with the person who wants to tape the phenomena than the person who whines about how the cameras are causing the trouble. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be terrified if that shit was happening in my house, but I'd be voraciously curious to tape it and watch it back later at the same time. It always seems that the person who wants to tape the phenomena is characterized as the bad guy, which puts me off a bit.
Another reason why the PA movies don't scare me as much as the Ringu series is because the concepts explored in PA are never used to their full potential, and that's a real shame. PA 3 is a perfect example of this. There were several scenes in the trailers that were cut out of the final movie. In fact, almost the entire trailer is never seen in the movie. Call me disappointed! Several of those clips looked really cool! Now, what was left WAS pretty damn good, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help but wonder when Kristi was going to throw the water on the demon and so on.
Before I get into it, I'll identify the main characters so the review isn't confusing to those who haven't seen the movie yet. Julie is Katie and Kristi's mother, Dennis is her boyfriend (they don't come out and say what happened to K2's father; maybe they're divorced or he died?), Katie and Kristi are the two little girls. Teddy Ruxpin as Himself.
The good stuff
- They made a very strong effort to make the movie really look like it was taking place in 1988. From the babysitter's totally 80's skirt to the use of Teddy Ruxpin, and the fact that there were mirrored closet doors all over the freakin' house, it was a very 80's-looking movie. Oh, and of course Dennis's equipment - big clunky video cameras and 6 hour video tapes!
Who else thought Teddy Ruxpin was fucking creepy? Close your beak-like mouth, Teddy.
- The little girl who played Kristi was so cute and a pretty decent little actress.
- Dennis and Randy's idea of using the swivel fan base to make a swiveling camera. That was really cool. What they did was remove most of the fan parts and mount a camera on the base so it could swivel back and forth while it was filming. That way, it could get the living room/dining room, then the kitchen, over and over all night. Can't you just see the awesome potential for this idea in terms of what the camera could capture? Now, I don't think they used this as much as they should have; there were things I would have done that they simply didn't do. Because the camera is swiveling, you could have some sort of creepy entity sneaking up on someone, and each time the camera swivels back, you see the entity get closer and closer. Wouldn't that have been cool??? I think so.
They did, however, do two really cool things with the swivel camera. What makes Julie finally admit that there is something paranormal happening in the house is someone knocks on the door and she goes to answer it, but there's no one there. When she goes back to the kitchen, everything is gone. Items sitting on the counters, the pots and pans, knick-knacks, the phone, even the kitchen table! A second later, all of these items fall off the ceiling and crash to the floor. O_O
WICKED...
The other thing they did with the swivel camera is my favorite scene in the whole movie. Julie and Dennis leave the girls with a babysitter and go out for the evening. Katie says she wants to hear a ghost story, so the babysitter puts a sheet over her head and pretends to be a ghost.
FYI: The picture below is about 2.5MBs, so it'll take a little longer to download than the usual pic. Although, with today's internet, it'll still probably be only a few seconds, heh. It isn't DVD quality since the movie didn't come off a DVD, but it's not that bad. Also, the scene moves normally in the actual movie. This wasn't capped frame by frame, which is why the movement is choppy. You should still be able to get the gist of it.
A little later, the babysitter sits down at the kitchen table to do her homework. The camera swivels back and forth a couple times and then, you see this:
Okay, that was AWESOME. If it happened to me, I'd be creeped all to hell. But catching it on camera and just watching it would be NEAT. Creeeeeepy.
- The Bloody Mary scene with Randy was all kinds of tense and cool. If that happened to me, I'd be shaking too.
- I usually hate jump scares. They're just so pointless. But I actually liked both the jump scares they did here because they made sense. Julie and then the babysitter were playing jokes on Dennis, and they were both good and pretty funny. So I liked that.
The bad stuff
- As I mentioned, many awesome scenes from the trailer were not used.
- They contradicted several things Katie said in PA and PA 2 about what the demonic experience was like when they were kids. Several things that should have been there were left out. Clearly they were going to end the movie with their house burning down like Katie said it did (one of the TV spots has a burning house in it), but it ended differently. Of course, the house burning down could have happened later, sometime after this movie, but the fire seemed like the natural ending since they were telling the story of what happened with the demon the first time.
- It was ambiguous whether Julie made it out of the movie alive. Somehow she had to only be unconscious because there are too many references made to her in PA that indicate she is still alive. I highly doubt Micah would make jokes to Katie that "we shouldn't let your mother come over anymore" if she was dead! How insensitive would that be?
- I didn't think it made sense that Katie would inherit a box of video tapes that are labeled with stuff like "Katie's birthday 1988" and yet, she never watched them. The woman lost everything she owned from her childhood, including family pictures, in a house fire. Anyone in that situation would get a VCR and watch every last tape as soon as possible, just to have that little bit of their childhood memories back. The tapes just sat in Kristi's basement for over a year? I call no way.
- The swiveling camera wasn't nearly used to its full potential. Not even close. Not that they didn't have two really awesome scenes with it, but there was SO much more they could have done.
- Julie being such a moron got on my nerves. There is no ghost/demon, your cameras are what's making the girls scared! Idiot. If someone tells you they've got compelling footage that could convince you there's a ghost in your house, you WATCH it. I get that the woman was in denial, but that didn't make her any less annoying.
- Julie going downstairs for a midnight snack and a light exploding isn't scary. Use your damn awesome idea to its full potential instead of giving us lame scenes like that with no payoff.
- And what was with that scene anyway? You're worried about noise waking up your daughters so you go downstairs and run the *garbage disposal* at 1AM?
- A couple months ago, I watched Paranormal Entity and it gave me a few ideas of things that they could have done to make certain scenes scarier. One was to have a ghost/invisible entity stalking someone in their bed where it looks like there's a figure under the covers with them, and then the sheet falls away and there's no one there. As you can see, they did something very much like this in PA 3. Now when I use it in a story, people will say I'm ripping off PA 3, but I'm really not because I got this idea before the movie even came out. They didn't do anything like that in Paranormal Entity. It bothers me when stuff like that happens. Oh well. I guess they've done similar things in other movies (Ju-on), and it's not something I should make a big deal about.
I think that's all I wanted to say. If I think of anything else, I'll add it. :)
