I’m one of the few hundred people in the world that’s seen Paranormal Activity 3 and I can tell you that when I watch the latest trailer for the film it’s barely recognizable. There are alternate takes, events that are completely removed from the film (like Kristi jumping off a balcony) and an entire plot device of a priest or spiritual expert coming into the home… and I’m wondering why.

Paranormal Activity 3, at least the version I’ve seen, which was unfinished, is a very streamlined movie. It has scares, but doesn’t feel all that repetitive with the previous films. It has giant tent pole moments in it that raise the stakes for the characters and completely change the interactivity that people have had with the demon.

PA3 feels much more hands on with people interacting directly with the creature and there comes a tipping point when the mother of the family wants to do something about it… From what I’ve seen thee scenes in the trailer would make her seem like an ass hole who doesn’t experiences all these horrible things and then makes the decision after a scare that seems small by comparison.

Let me explain without going into spoiler territory. The mother in the film is the skeptic. She doesn’t really believe what’s going and she won’t even watch the proof that her husband/bf has captured on video. In the trailer we see her getting dragged into a room, the house being set on fire, her flying around and it seems that the finale is completely different from the version we saw.

There’s only two reasons I can think of that account for this… we’re going to see PA4 that takes place between PA3 and PA1 or that they simply didn’t like the ending that they had filmed. The version I experienced was intense and I didn’t see it coming. I really liked it a lot and it put a new twist on the series and a new face on the evil demon. What I’m seeing in the trailer appears to be more of the same.

BUT there’s a chance that the version we saw at Fantastic Fest isn’t anything like the final product and that we simply didn’t see some of the things from the trailer because they weren’t finished or just weren’t in the cut they brought. The entire priest being slammed into the table and thrown back thing isn’t in the film and also features 2 camera angles, meaning it’d be the only shot in the movie like that. Maybe that’s why it’s not in the final product… I dont’ know… I shouldn’t say final product because it still might be.

it’s interesting to see that there are two wildly different versions of the film in existence and I’m really excited to see what the DVD/Blu-ray will be like and if it will feature both cuts.

For this reason I’ll be reviewing the final version of the film again and posting it up on the day it comes out. I want to make sure that the version I’ve already reviewed is indeed the way the film plays out.

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