well, i just saw it for the first time saturday and i have to say it was better than i expected, but definitely overhyped and not really all that scary. it had a few eerie scenes (the footprints appearing on the floor, for instance) and i liked the ending (although the alternate ending was better), but overall i thought it was average.

C+

I liked it quite a bit. Pretty effective at being creepy. Not terrifying or anything for me. I did, however, find it especially creepy when she stood next to the bed for an hour or two, not moving.

Grade: B+

5/10 -> C-

It starts off very good, great almost. But soon it gets repetitive and thus very boring. By the end I was completely bored and felt like the movie lasted for like two and a half hours, but I was entertained how funny the movie was instead of scary, creepy or whatever word everyone else used and finally I was thoroughly irritated by Micah. When he got killed it wasn't satisfying enough. He deserved to have his bowels ripped up and flying all over the room. He got away better than he deserved.

I read about the original ending. It sounds much much better than the one they ended up using in the theatrical cut. But I don't know how it played out in the film. It's better than last year's Cloverfield, but not better than Blair or REC.

C

The ending is the best part and the only scary part of the movie.

Rather genuinely scary at times, but it's mostly silly and ridiculous.

Agreed. I re-watched it a few months ago. The daytime scenes feel so tedious. It's not a good thing in a movie if I'm bored by one thing waiting for something else to happen.

But the scary scenes are scary.

Seven years since its first festival appearance and five years since general audiences were first terrified by the found footage shocker, I have kept up a yearly tradition of watching the film during October leading up to Halloween.

This may be the first year where I've grown tired of it.

It's not that the film is bad. But the biggest issue I have is the choice to go with very minimal scares until the last ten minutes (which hold up very well). In fact, there seems to be one or two pivotal moments in the middle of the film (Katie standing over Micah for hours; the footprints) that are surrounded by a bunch of non-events and the tedious daytime scenes.

I won't even blame Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston on this one. I believe Oren Peli just gave them bad direction. Attitudes and overall moods seem to change at random. The film's two leads alternate from excitement to horror, from acceptance to contempt, from a fear to the nighttime terrors to a more reserved, relaxed feeling. I get it if you're going to say Katie is slowly becoming possessed as the film progresses, but it doesn't feel organic at all. It feels like a seven-day shoot where they went with a bunch of different ideas and it's edited together poorly.

It's too bad they couldn't edit together the first three films into one. Take thirty minutes of each film and edit it into a solid film. The buildup to the scares in both of the first two films is too long and boring. I might even suggest only 15-20 minutes of PA1 and 10-15 of PA2 and the rest of PA3.

But alas, that won't happen. In any event, I do enjoy a few key scenes of PA1, but I appreciate the franchise as a whole more than I actually like any individual movie (have yet to see The Marked Ones).

Revised Grade: **