7/10
Best in series
7 May 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Minor plot spoilers

I am not a fan of this series. The stories are too slow to build with long scenes of nothing and then the scare is minimal. This movie is the spoiler for the series as we find out from the subtitle "It runs in the family." We do get an explanation. This is a prequel filmed in high quality DVD using a VHS camera. The acting was better in this one. Lauren Bittner was convincing as Julie. In one scene she puts on a mask and scares the guys. She is so happy she got one over on them, she jumps around with bubbly joy. Also extremely realistic is young Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) who convinces me she has an imaginary friend named Captain Howdy, er ah Toby. Likewise child actor Chloe Csengery did an excellent job as Katie as she goes screaming across the room.

There is a sex scene that is comical. Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) starts out mouthing "wack-a-da, wack-a-da" porno music and as a romantic sort stampedes right to Julie's chest. There are some strange events going on in the house, so it gets wired for VHS tapes. Now as I recall the longest VHS tape setting was 6 hours (some were 8 hours) which means they would of had to been changed out frequently and viewed for paranormal activity with some scenes lasting for a second. With multiple cameras going 24/7...well you get the idea of how tedious and impracticable this becomes. In one scene the stationary VHS camera is looking at the entire girl's bedroom and then the next second it is focusing on Kristi's bed. While they used the amateur camera for a realistic effect, they didn't stay true to it, which made for a better movie. Maybe one day they will discover how real movies are made.

What is not credible is the wife not believing what is going on and refusing to look at the evidence on film. They had to do this so they could keep the constant build up. Dennis filming everything with the camera at grandma's house didn't make much sense. At some point if you are being chased, you stop filming and run. If you are hiding and need to be quiet, you don't keep the camera on. The chase scene is hard to justify filming in all of these types of movies. I felt a little short changed on the ending.

Like the other movies, it starts out slowly, but it doesn't sputter and grind its wheels like they did. This is my favorite of the three.

F-bomb, no nudity, comical foreplay scene. Was that a 1993 Free Willy stuffed whale in this 1988 movie? Now that was really unexplained.
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