Written by Consecutive releases in a movie franchise normally deal with plots that go forward in time. However, it doesn’t work that way in the case of the Paranormal Activity franchise. The first of the series depicted young California couple Katie and Micah and their obsession to capture on video an entity that causes weird occurrences in their home, which resulted in demon possession and terrifying death.
The next installment is both a parallel prequel and a sequel of the first film, going back two months before and moving forward where it left off in the original movie. Another discovered video footage discloses that the entity was passed on to Katie by her sister Kristi after it almost broke their family apart.
The upcoming film release, Paranormal Activity 3, makes use of even more play of the timeline, taking us back to 1988, 18 years before the incidents shown in the two earlier installments. It reveals how the demonic entity first developed an interest in Katie and Kristi. As young kids, they have inadvertently invited the entity into their home by chanting the phrase “Bloody Mary” three times in front of the bathroom mirror.
While it appears to be another prequel in the online trailer, it is yet to be confirmed if it will also be a sequel similar to the earlier installment.