Critics Split on New Paranormal

Reviewers are divided over the third Paranormal Activity installment, which once again aims to frighten with low-budget footage.

• In the newest film, “the sense of dread that permeated the first Paranormal Activity is gone,” writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. We’re seeing the series “succumb to self-parody, though it wasn't a far fall.”

• In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Olsen fervently disagrees, calling the third installment “the sharpest, most wildly aware film in the series,” with a “fresh, active energy” that’s “largely missing from the rather lumbering maneuvers of the earlier 'found footage' fright flicks."
• Claudia Puig, writing in USA Today, calls it “the most ambitious Paranormal,” though “not the most frightening.”
• In the Star-Ledger, Stephen Whitty calls the film “more of the same—and at this point, that’s not quite enough.”