Once upon a time, there were two little girls.  They lived in a big house with Mommy, Step-daddy and their own pet demon.  Except the demon wasn’t really a pet.  And things didn’t end up Happily Ever After.  The tagline for Paranormal Activity 3 is “Discover how the activity began”.  And damn if they don’t show you.  Vividly.  Fasten your seat belts kiddies, it’s gonna be a bumpy night.

For those of you who have seen the first two movies — and that should be everyone seeing this third installment, otherwise you’ll be missing out on vital info and bigtime creepy — the Paranormal Activity series centers around two sisters, Katie and Kristi.  As you’d expect from the title, things aren’t exactly normal in their respective households.  In fact, you could say that by the end of the first two movies things have pretty much gone to hell.  Why these two ladies?  What, in the words of Cordelia Chase, was their childhood trauma?  Well, here we find out.  And oh boy is it good.

This movie starts in 2005, before the events of the first two films.  Fans of the series should be used to the back-and-forth timeline by now, but it’s still spooky to see Kristi painting the room that would become Hunter’s nursery.  Hey look, it’s Katie!  And she’s…bringing a truckload of crap to Kristi’s house for storage.  So that’s why Kristi’s basement was so darn packed with junk!  And here I thought their major problem was that the crew from Horders hadn’t found them yet.  Y’know, aside from the whole demon thing.

Cut to the day Kristi’s house was “ransacked”, and she mentions that the only things missing are the necklace her sister gave her, and a bunch of tapes.  Cut to the tapes.  Roll footage.  And now we’re back in 1988, when Katie and Kristi are wee little girls living in a huge house that’s 80s-tastic.  We’re talking groovy 1980s Art Deco lamps and mirrors, tiled kitchen counters and Teddy Ruxpin.  Oh yeah, and a tiny little door in the girl’s room that leads to a wee tiny room.  Where Toby lives.  Toby’s Kristi’s invisible playmate.  Y’know, like Regan’s friend Captain Howdy.  Nothing wrong with that.  But Step-dad gets freaked out by the banging and thumping, so he decides to set up cameras everywhere (the film covers the reason why he’d have so many by letting us know he’s a wedding videographer).  Toby doesn’t like the cameras one bit, and goes Pazuzu on everybody’s tuchas.

Paranormal Activity 3 does a fantastic job with keeping things realistic.  Although the house itself seems a bit too 21st Century McMansion for 1988, the set design is spot-on and the costuming is very close to period.  (So much so that I pitied the poor actress that played the babysitter for having to wear a poofy, tiered miniskirt and side ponytail.)  The cinematography is also well done, giving a crisp, clean look to the 2005 footage, and a grainy, low-pixel feel to the 1988 “tapes”.  The FX are practically throwbacks to the 1930’s era horror movies, but they’re effective and very chilling.  Writer Christopher B. Landon takes Oren Peli’s initial story and characters and crafts an interesting backstory worthy of the franchise.  In the younger girls you see glimmers of the personalities the older characters had, a nice touch other writers may not have incorporated. There are also nice touches of humor sprinkled throughout, as characters make fun of themselves and each other for believing in things so obviously cray cray.  Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman even manage to merge the two a few times, nice work indeed.

Paranormal Activity 3 did something I never thought a third part of a series would do; it left me wanting to know more about these characters and their story.  As with any good scary story, there are more questions than answers at the end of the film.  Paranormal Activity 4?  I’d see it.