Editorials
[Special Report] So I Watched ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ At The House It Was Filmed In…
To help celebrate the DVD/Blu-ray release of Paranormal Activity 3, Paramount recently held a contest in which two contest winners would be flown out to LA to attend a special viewing of the film at the house in which it was filmed. The winners were picked based on trivia knowledge of the franchise and, in this instance, were flown in from Michigan. They were treated to an almost private viewing of the film, dinner and a few special “guests”.
Since the house had already been gussied up for the occasion we were asked if we wanted to come along and check it out. PA3 is my favorite film in the franchise and I felt that the house lent the film a lot of personality so it was kind of a no-brainer to attend.
Hit the jump for a breakdown along with some photos and video. My companion and I are picked up at my apartment via towncar. The new owners of the house are understandably cagey about giving out the exact location of the place so it’s probably good practice that they weren’t just emailing the address around or handing out directions.
At 630PM on a Friday night it takes almost an hour to reach our destination. But when we do, it’s clearly marked. Toby, under his sheet, stands in the driveway awaiting us.
We beat the contest winners there and are shown around the house by our hosts. It’s one of the few film locations I’ve visited that appears almost identical in real life when compared to its presentation onscreen. Aside from a few minor touches, it’s virtually the same. At least to my eyes.
We head out into the backyard, which houses a tent similar to the one the girls use in the film. Of course now it’s embellished with floodlights and a character that may seem familiar to you from the end of the film.
We head back inside and find Oren Peli and his girlfriend waiting for us. We talk for a bit (and stare at the food spread that awaits us (I’m starving). The contest winners arrive soon thereafter, not knowing quite what to make of the whole experience. They seemed really nice, just a bit overwhelmed and a little shy.
Now that they’re here we can finally eat. We all sit down at the kitchen table and help ourselves to some delicious burgers and sandwiches. I dutifully, and briefly, prod Oren for details about Paranormal Activity 4, but the dude is a steel trap when it comes to his development projects so I got absolutely zero new info. He’s a super nice guy, he just knows how to play the cards close to the chest, which is probably a wise idea. In fact, the only thing he was willing to go on record about was his hatred for pickles and vegetables in general. See, our catered burgers all had pickles on them. And Oren really can’t abide them. So much so that it’s not even enough to just take the pickles off. He won’t eat anything that once had a pickle on it. I almost felt bad that he limited himself to mac and cheese as I chowed down on three cheeseburgers.
After dinner we head upstairs. I’d done some snooping up there earlier – including turning off the lights in the bathroom and saying “Bloody Mary” three times* – but this time we all take turns checking out Toby’s little closet* – which still has some of that creepy writing on the walls.
We finally sit down to watch the movie in the upstairs loft featured prominently in the film. The screen is set up where the tea sat in he movie was placed. Toby’s closet is just to the left of it and Teddy Ruxpin keeps a dutiful eye on us as we watch the movie.
Paranormal Activity 3 has plenty of scares on its own, but the experience was slightly augmented by our “guests”. About 1/3rd of the way through the film, Toby’s closet door SLAMMED shut – generating a scream from just about everyone in the room. The aquarium in the corner made noises in time with the aquarium in the film and stuff “flew” at us during the appropriate sections of the film. At one point, Toby’s symbol appeared in the etch-o-sketch on the desk.
Sadly, my personal “no cell-phone policy” was in effect. I didn’t feel like ruining the movie for everyone else, so I didn’t get any of that on tape. You’ll have to use your imagination.
After the film I said goodbye to the house, as I’ll likely never be there again. On our way out I ask one of our hosts if the owners have ever seen PA3. “No way.” Probably a wise choice. If this film can keep people awake after watching it in their own apartments, imagine the effect it would have on an actual resident of the house!
* you can see this in the video below. I use the word “see” loosely – most of the video is pretty d*amn dark (with a few light spots). It’s a compendium of some cool moments in the evening that aren’t featured in the photos above, so you should check it out regardless.
Paranormal Activity 3 is now out on DVD and Blu-ray. It features a director’s cut that I prefer to the theatrical version.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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