153, Paranormal Activity 3

I am not going to admit to being the toughest guy on the block, in fact Love Actually still brings a tear to my eye but hand on heart - I am not a horror movie fan.

Okay, so I've watched my share and over the past 12 months.  I've sucked it up and watched Insidious and Scream 4 so being a Paranormal virgin decided to suck it up and go and see what all the fuss was about. 

And I papped myself!

That's it, its out in the open - proper scared.  But why?

Well, its not creepy, spooky, gory or mental - it's fear comes from anticipation and tension.  A slow panning home movie camera switching between kitchen and lounge in night vision, not entirely sure whats going top jump out at you is slightly unnerving but what makes it worse is the big screen, the dark, the sound and most importantly, a cinema full of teenagers who start screaming at a pin dropping.

That's the trick - building the atmosphere.  I can vouch for this as I went back to good old Sky movies and watched Paranormal Activity 2, at home, lights on, middle of the day, 38" TV and too be honest, not at all scared but why would I? After all, its a silly movie.

And so is Number 3 but at the Big Screen you see it in a whole other light.

This is a prequel to the other two with our two sisters as young girls getting their first taste of the demons lurking under the stairs.  I'm not going to give anything away but there are a daft moments along with a few jumpy ones and even one or two laugh out loud ones but don't get me wrong, a majority will make you jump slightly out of your chair, even more so if the person behind you screams first!

The constant repetitiveness of the scrolling cameras does get tedious as more often than not, nothing actually happens but you continue to perch on the edge of your seat just waiting for the next bump in the night which when it eventually comes has the audience scream, then laugh at themselves screaming, then laugh at everyone else who screamed too!

Luckily, its just only 1hr 15min long so it does not keep you hanging around watching empty rooms for too long which is a blessing but my advise is don't wait for the DVD or TV release as it will have the same depreciation value as a Bentley and you would have missed the whole point of how the movie needs to be seen for it to work.

This is probably the jumpiest movie of the year so if this is your thing, don't let it skip you by.