Just as I wouldn’t consider home video of a child’s birthday party to be a film, I don’t consider “Paranormal Activity 3” to be a film. Rather, it is a recording of awful, shameless acting mixed with minimal special effects. What the directors intended to be an entertaining horror flick turned out to be a shallow waste of time with intermittent cheap tricks used to regain your attention right before you walk out of the theater, irritated that you wasted your money on such a sham.

The “movie” consists of creaking doors, screams, things jumping in front of you. Doesn’t that sound like a haunted house except less interactive? Until the very end, nothing actually happens. Most of the time, the things jumping out at you aren’t even scary, they’re just unexpected. It’s funny for about two seconds until you realize that you paid for this crap. If I wanted laughs I’d wait until “Breaking Dawn – Part I” came out. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that it involves the usual scary things: darkness, ghosts, and old people.

The Bottom Line

If you want to be scared, walk through a haunted corn maze. It’s actually scary, wastes less of your time, and is probably cheaper than going to the movies. I’m tired of the cliches of horror: the shaky camera, the child that communicates with demons, the relentlessly skeptical wife, the protective yet useless husband, and the idea that surprise is the same thing as fear.