Be Reel Blog: Paranormal Activity 1,2, and 3

Being someone that usually isn't a fan of horror movies, I was very hesitant to watch the Paranormal Activity series. I don't exactly enjoy being scared. I watched them in 2,1,3 order. However, the chronological order is 3,2,1. Without making this a summary, I'll try my best to explain the series. There is a demon that has been following the sisters, Katie and Christie, since they were little. Originally, only Katie saw the spirit. However, once Katie didn't want to talk to this spirit anymore, it bean to bother Christie too. It became inactive after some, to say the least, terrifying encounters. The entire third movie consisted of that story of their childhood and the demon. The second movie jumps to Katie and Christie being much older with lives of their own. Christie gave birth to her son, Hunter, and things got weird fast. The demon wanted Hunter's soul, but we don't know that until the end. This movie is mostly about the demon becoming more and more aggressive until it possesses Christie. This forces christie to put the demon on her sister, Katie. This leads to the first movie. Finally, the first movie is all about Katie and her boyfriend, Micah. The hauntings also et progressively worse here, because all the demon wants is Katie. Finally, at the end of the movie, Katie is possessed, goes and steals Hunter, and kills Christie and her husband in the process. Although the movies were made out of order, they are strung together.

Overall, I think the directors of this series took an interesting route. These movies are all shot in first person. Whether it's from a home camcorder, security cameras, or a cell phone camera. Personally, I think that this was an ineffective way to film this. If not all of the movie was in this format, especially in Paranormal Activity 2, the audience would have been able to take so much more away from it. A lot of the footage that is "provided" for the audience is useless footage where nothing happens. I understand that this is supposed to build suspense, however, there is such thing as too much suspense to the point that it becomes boring to watch. That being said, when things were actually happening, the movie was incredibly entertaining. Although I'm not a fan of horror movies, I felt that some of the choices were just the right amount of scary. In those instances, that is where I'd like to see some first-person-shooting. Otherwise, it is just pointless filming that doesn't add anything to the plot.

This series could have been done much better. For that reason, I am going to rate this series bad good. The only reason I'm giving this series the benefit of the doubt, and giving it an objective rating of good, is because there was the occasional part that was actually scary and entertaining. So it's good, but barely. Subjectively, I don't think there is anything to take away from this series but "wow, being haunted by a demon sucks." So, overall, I'm not too pleased. It just wasn't the worst series I've ever seen. I still put my time into watching 3 of them to learn the story behind it all, so that's good on them! Otherwise, I have no reason to go back and watch them again.