Is 'Paranormal Activity 3' the best movie in the series?

Just the other day, I finally got the chance to watch “Paranormal Activity 3.” As you may have guessed from the title, this movie is the third installment in the “Paranormal Activity” film series, and like the first two movies, this one contained its fair share of creepy moments.

Released just 10 days before Halloween last year, “Paranormal Activity 3” was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. The cast of this horror film included Lauren Bittner, Brian Boland, Johanna Braddy, Jessica Tyler Brown, Chloe Csengery, Katie Featherston, Hallie Foote, Sprague Grayden, Dustin Ingram and Chris Smith.

The movie was written by 36-year-old Christopher B. Landon, who is probably best known for being the son of late actor and filmmaker, Michael Landon. Other movies written by Christopher Landon include 2007’s “Disturbia,” which many of you probably watched and enjoyed.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing “Paranormal Activity 3,” it’s set about 20 years before the first two movies and likely answers many of the questions that you may have asked yourself while watching the first two films. Like the first two “Paranormal Activities,” much of this movie is supposedly based on found footage and explains how the main characters become entangled with an evil spirit that follows and plagues them from childhood into adulthood. I hesitate to say much more about the plot because I don’t want to ruin the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it.

Like the first two “Paranormal Activity” films, “Paranormal Activity 3” was extremely popular among movie-going audiences. It reaped box office revenues of over $205 million against a budget of just $5 million. It also broke a number of other revenue records on its opening day. Of the three “Paranormal Activity” movies, it had the best opening at almost $53 million; the best opening day for a horror film in the U.S. at just over $26 million; the best ever midnight opening for a horror film at $8 million and the highest opening for any film ever in the month of October.

While reading up on this movie, I was interested to learn that Christopher Chacon helped promote and publicize the third installment. In addition to being a writer, director and producer, Chacon is also a paranormal investigator and researcher who is generally considered to be one of the world’s top experts on paranormal phenomena. Chacon, 48, is a native of California and traveled the world investigating a wide varsity of paranormal phenomena for the Office of Scientific Investigation and Research.

In the end, I really enjoyed “Paranormal Activity 3” and would recommend it to anyone out there who enjoys horror movies and is old enough to watch a movie that’s Rated R. How many of you out there have seen this movie? What did you think about it? Did you like it or dislike it and why? Which of the three “Paranormal Activity” movies is your personal favorite and why?

Those of you who like the “Paranormal Activity” series will be pleased to hear that Paramount Studios announced last month that a fourth installment in the series is in the works and is set to be released this coming Oct. 19.