Posts Tagged “demon”
To be blunt with you, I’m not really a big fan of the ‘found footage pseudo-documentaries’ style movies, there are a few that I generally did enjoy for what they where, for example Paranormal Activity 3 (I had seen the first 2 but didn’t feel the need to write a review seeing as they where way old now). But even as bad as Paranormal Activity 3 was for that film series, The Devil Insider.. made me wish the devil was inside me, so that I could rip my eyes out.
Seriously, the weakest part of the story is that, there is no story. Here we have this young woman Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade), who at the start of the movie we basically learn that her mother (Suzan Crowley) murdered three people. The two priests and the nun were at her house to perform an exorcism. As you can guess, from this point on and for the whole movie, we follow Isabella on a quest to find out why her mother killed three people.
Here is where logic really starts to hit home, and I know that when we’re talking about something like this, you need to check that at the door. But when you question things while watching this shaky camerawork and spliced first person interviews crap fest you start to ask yourself a simple question; Why the hell are they still worry about the camera?
I think that’s the weakest part of these line of movies, at yes we understand that it’s suppose to be a documentary and all but when people start to end up dead, when your running for you life now, I personally would drop the heavy as camera. It’s one thing like in Cloverfield where your maybe far away from the action not so much happening to you directly, but when the ‘devil’ has possess someone and has killed.. you might want to think. That said, this movie would have done better had to been done ‘normally’ aka not found footage crap.
Without ruining the movie, I can tell you a number of things, we have Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), two Catholic priests who basically have gone rogue. Their against the Church in a way, performing exorcisms in secret because they’re cases are labeled as nothing more than ‘mental illnesses’. Here is where the story gets screwy and it tries to be something more.
Here we have Isabella more or less being selfish, she wants to save her mother, she believes a demon made her do what she did, and at this point you can believe that, I wouldn’t call it the devil (would think he have better things to do). Anyways we get hints that Ben did something pretty fucked up in his past, which comes up but never is really explain to what, just as Isabella is pointed out to have had an abortion of her child because she found out she couldn’t carry it to term. Which I’m no doctor I would think that basically means the baby wouldn’t have had a change to live. It’s a question and debate if that is wrong or not.. but that’s not what this is about.
In any case, the demon inside now wants to hurt her for being a baby killer. Jumping from person to person, starting with David, where he almost drowns a baby, to then the next scene shooting his brains out. We end up with what is a lot of talking, some small, funny not at all scary moments to the ending, where basically everyone ends up dead. What a shock right? Petty much this movie follows the same plot line as every other movie of its time.
With all that said, the biggest shortcomings in the way of personalities of the characters. I really don’t care about any of them and they are all trying too hard to be funny or to make you feel sorry for them. There was one thing that this movie does that stood apart from the others of its kind, it was graphic, we see blood, we see people toss, sadly we don’t see anyone outright killed, the only shot we see of someone being murder is when David, being processed by the demon holds a gun in his mouth and shoots. Other then that, all the graphic moments are more or less after math shots.
I don’t recommend this movie, its pure crap it had some really good chances to be something good, the story had too much of too little of nothing. I wasn’t sure if the movie was trying to save her mouth and cast out the demon or simply to prove that demons exists and these people need help. The best part of this movie, was the trailer sadly.
To sum up everything about this movie, it’s crap, it’s stupid, it’s not scary.. it’s not even funny it doesn’t give us anything new that I haven’t seen and the ending.. well.. is that it gives you a website address saying the case unsolved and go there for more information… What? Don’t see this movie, don’t even buy it I’m sure it’ll be on YouTube at some point.. or well you know.
The question comes up to me many times when I discuss the issue with friends and family. Do horror films really scare people? The question came up again when I saw Paranormal Activity 3 just the other day. On a personal level I’ll come right out and tell you that Paranormal Activity 3 is NOT as good as the first two. I find the second one to be the solid movie as far as ‘story’ goes.
The movie focus is Katie and Kristi, and unlike the first two films they are kids revealing to us what happen to lead to the events of the 2nd film. We’re given their mother who is pretty much very skeptical that anything is going on. Their father, or step-father who looks rather close to Micah form the first film, is a videographer. They go into what would be the series first sex scene is cut short when a earthquake erupts. Later Dennis discovers that there was an invisible figure there when finds it emerging from dust.
Just like the other films, this event naturally leads him keep recording and changing tapes every six hours. That is until the first night he sees Kristi get out of bed and speak to someone off camera, discovering that this invisible friend is named Tobi. This leads us down a path of a series of events of night video clips of Kristi speaking to someone at night, getting up and moving around and even at one point standing at the door to his mother and step-fathers room for nearly 3 hours before going back to bed.
The film in my opinion does a rather poor job in giving us the feeling that this invisible friend means no harm, that is until things get real. Watching I found myself almost chuckling and waiting for something to happen and what happens is nothing but small pauses and nothing short to be scared about. The film always seems to cut us short in explaining any information the father discovers about whats going. In a nutshell, Paranormal Activity 3 is mostly what you would expect out of the first two, just a lot less of it.
There was only a few sense that stood apart and did and in all account bring some sort of tension; this was when the demon stop being the nice little Tobi and started to attack the little girls. Such as picking her up by her hair and more or less off-screen trashing her a bit. All we learn form the movie is that he wants something and wants Kristi to do it as Katie teases her a few times about it. The tension building in this one was lacking and I did find myself watching the time now and then. Which is pretty sad given I watches the first two and came away with hopes that I loved this one as well; simply not the case.
Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a bad film. The some good reviews and the amount of money that its made clearly shows it’s a strong film.. but for someone who was hoping for some sort of closure I got nothing. I really wouldn’t want to go into too much detail or over talk about the ending and the plot itself and how it fits into the overall picture. This is after all a prequel to the first two, taking place when they are little girls. The only real complains I have is that they had to have cut an hour of this movie out as there was a number of really down right scary scenes in the trailers that where not in the movie at all, like the house burning down. Something that I feel was a key event that we didn’t get to see. Another issue I had been that this one really gives us no reason about how we’re seeing these tapes. Like the first two the videos were found upon finding the bodies, this one pretty much doesn’t give us anything and the ending sort of leaves you wondering.
Finally, do I recommend Paranormal Activity 3? Yes and No. If you can look past it’s flaws (which they all have) and enjoy it and let yourself get suck into it, then yes I would check it out. But if your like me and found yourself sort of scratching your head with a huh look you may want to wait for it to hit DVD to rent and check it out. Maybe we’ll get a directors cut with that missing footage to fill the holes. While I might have sounded like I dislike the movie, I don’t I simply can’t go on about how this is the BEST of the series. To me that would be Paranormal Activity 2, which may be being if you look at this as a whole, Paranormal Activity 2 is the ending; aka the demon gets what he wants finally.