I’m a huge fan of the “Paranormal Activity” movies. The unique way in which these films have utilized the “found footage” style has been both refreshing and horrifying – that is, until now.

“Paranormal Activity 3” has fallen very short of the legacy of the series, and it’s a shame to bear witness to.

This prequel to the first two films takes place in the late 80’s and again focuses on the sisters Katie (Chloe Csengery) and Kristi Rey (Jessica Tyler Brown). The sisters are living with their mother Julie (Lauren Bitter) and her boyfriend Dennis (Chris Smith), and have befriended an invisible entity named Toby who lives in their house.

Naturally, some spooky stuff starts happening in the night and Dennis, who just happens to be a wedding videographer, decides to set up cameras in the house to catch said spooky stuff along with a lot of unnecessarily long pan shots and a completely random sub-plot involving witches.

As I said, I’m a fan of this style of filming, but “Paranormal 3” didn’t bring anything new to the table aside from stretching the bounds of believability. There were several moments in the film that I found myself wondering why the cameraman was carrying around a camera at that particular moment or even why the camera was left on.

One possible reason for the shortcomings of this installment could be the directors, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. Neither have worked with the “Paranormal” franchise before this, although they have made another “found footage” film called “Catfish.”

The true disappointment lies with producer Oran Peli, who has been involved as a writer with all of the “Paranormal” films as well as “Insidious.” Seeing as he remodeled his own home to film in and bankrolled the original film, you would think he would have looked at the third one and said, “Maybe this isn’t the direction to take.”

The biggest downfall of this movie is that all the cool and interesting moments advertised, as well as the plot advertised in the commercials, were not actually in the movie. The previews show a house fire that played a large part in the back-story this movie was supposed to portray, yet it was completely absent in the final product.

Also, nearly all of the scary moments shown in the trailers that were omitted from the film for whatever reason were replaced by rather lack-luster scares and false-alarms, aside from one rather inspired moment in a kitchen.

“Paranormal Activity 3” had the potential to be another great addition to the “Paranormal” series, but instead it became a tedious exercise in unrewarded patience for this unhappy viewer.

Luke Bohannon