How does it hold up without a large chunk of the cast?
We’re back to “they didn’t make these in any sort of order” mode with this one. Like Paranormal Activity, the third part is a prequel-sequel of sorts. They did this because (in my opinion) they made the mistake of killing a central character off in the first movie, not expecting to make a bunch of sequels. Unlike Jason Vorhees these people stay dead, so…
Rather than being about the familiar family from the first two, this story follows a teen girl, Quinn, and her family. There’s some personal hardship going down for all of them as the mother has died, leaving her widower father unable to cope with the situation in both a financial and emotional sense, and also leaving Quinn sort of hanging and having to cope.
We also get the ghost-hunter-types from the first two movies, and a sort of origin of how they got together. They’re all battling a new, creepy-ass wheezing ghost-demon-thing. Once again we get to see into the “Further” (as a Dresden fan it’s always tempting to call all of these dimensions the “Never Never.”)
The production and acting in these movies stays at the same level as expected in a Blumhouse movie — but this one is where it starts to feel a little tired, to be honest. This movie definitely suffers from being the third one, even though I like it. It almost feels like the series wasn’t expected to go on and this was sort of put together as an attempt to expand the universe. I like the universe, so I appreciate the effort, it just shows a little.
They excel at using a little to do a lot, though, and once again the movies do create a fairly creepy and compelling monster that is pretty original as far as ghost-demon-things go. It isn’t my favorite evil spirit from a movie by any means but it was entertaining. Of course, he couldn’t be all that impressive because he had to target a stressed, depressed teenage girl with a broken leg. Seems kind of cowardly to go after someone already worn down — but it also plays on our fears of being kicked when we are down.
I will admit, and this is a little spoilery, I’m a big fan of parental intervention to stop the bad guy. This one pulled it off in a hell of a way.
The movie is overall worth seeing. If this is your genre, or you liked the first two, it’s definitely worth seeing. But if you aren’t into it… I’m not sure why you read this far.
Report Card:
Running Time: An hour thirty eight.
Acting: Decent.
Effects: More than we’re used to. Decent.
Violence: Pretty much off screen.
Gun Use: No.
Gore: No.
Creepy? Not as much.
Monster Type? A demon-thing.
Funny? A little.
Nudity: None.
Pacing: It’s decent but seems slow at times.
