Paranormal Activity 3 - Blu-ray Review

3.7 Stars (out of 5)

Synopsis

A malign and murderous spirit continues to dwell within a San Diego home in this second creepy sequel to 2007's chilling Paranormal Activity. Hoping to catch photo evidence of Bloody Mary, the residents soon become victims in their own horror film. Buy Now $21.99

Starring:

Katie Featherston, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Sprague Grayden, Lauren Bittner, Mark Fredrichs, Brian Boland

Director:

Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

Blu-ray Release Date:

January 24, 2012

Subtitles:

English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese

Rating

Overall rating weighted as follows:
Audio 40%, Video 40%, Special Features 20%, Movie - its just our opinion so take it with a grain of salt

Audio 4.0 Stars (out of 5)

Dolby and DTS Demo Discs used as basis for comparison

• Subwoofer – 5.0 Stars
• Dialog – 5.0 Stars
• Surround Effects – 2.0 Stars
• Dynamic Range – 4.0 Stars

English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1, Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1

Every once in a while a Blu-ray features a sound effect that astounds me and makes me watch the scene again just to hear it one more time. This movie has the best earthquake sounds I’ve ever heard. The subwoofer vibrates so violently I begin to wonder if the earthquake was real. Other low frequencies are handled just as awesome. Whenever the ghost is near soft low rumbles are heard, doors slam with tight booms, and bumps on walls sound all too real. Rear speakers are hardly ever heard. Every once in a while you can hear squeaks and rattles behind you, but that’s it. Whispers of children are easily heard thanks to the dialog’s well engineered performance. Overall, this movie is mostly quiet without much action. When the action does happen, it performs well and can be startling at times.

Video 4.3 Stars (out of 5)

Spears & Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray Edition used as basis for comparison

• Color Accuracy  - 4.5 Stars
• Shadow detail – 4.0 Stars
• Clarity – 3.5 Stars
• Skin tones – 5.0 Stars
• Compression – 4.5 Stars

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC, Resolution: 1080p, Aspect ratio: 1.78:1, Original Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Most of this film is intended to be actual footage of VHS tapes from 1988. Fortunately, they don’t go overboard trying to make this movie look too authentic. However, it seems they dialed down the clarity and added more grain in an effort to commit to the VHS look. This movie features lots of scenes in the dark, and details get lost. This is expected, because if everything is visible in the dark, it wouldn’t be as scary, just like sleeping with the lights on. Colors are natural and somewhat muted, but skin tones look great.

Bonus Features 2.0 Stars (out of 5)

• Scare Montage (1080p, 2:15): Clips of Dennis trying to scare his girlfriend.
• Dennis' Commercial (1080p, 0:56): A commercial for Dennis' business.
• Digital Copy.
• UV Copy
• DVD Copy

Movie – 2.5 Stars (out of 5)

Review

Paranormal Activity 3 does a great job of cranking up the tension, but fails to be a movie I’ll remember watching next month. I will admit, I jumped a few times, and it was creepy watching it, but these movies are kind of boring. Lots of the movie was spent watching people sleep. Granted, that’s when the paranormals seam to be most active, but watching people sleep is still dull. This type of movie gets a lot of mileage out of you anticipating the scare, and most of the time it doesn’t pay off since most of the interesting stuff happens off screen. The plot never fully develops and the reasons why all these creepy things are happening aren’t completely explained. However, the actors in this movie did a great job of making it seam real. So much so that at times I felt uncomfortable and creepy spying on someone’s life. Paranormal Activity is a surprisingly successful franchise. Since the movies cost less than $10 million to make and gross an average of $300 million, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of these movies.