This weekend’s predictions and revenue projections go as follows:

1. Paranormal Activity 3 ($47 million) - The film’s release perfectly caters to Halloween audiences. Also remember that unlikely blockbuster franchises (‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ ‘Shrek’) always blow away pre-set expectations when audience interest is high. ‘Paranormal’ is a rare entry that actually scares audiences, and they’ll reward the film for it.

2. The Three Musketeers ($13 million) - Audience disenchantment with this film will set in very quickly, but it still will likely pull in crowds at the start of the weekend. That puts the opening number somewhere mid range (mainly around where ‘Priest’ opened last summer with similar foreign influence). After Saturday, though, expect this one to really start to nosedive.

3. Real Steel ($9.2 million) - The boxing robot picture will tangle with ‘Footloose’ again. ‘Steel’ holds the advantage, as it will draw in family audiences, while most of ‘Footloose’s’ target audience will be enjoying ‘Paranormal Activity’ instead.

4. Footloose ($8 million) – The film’s opening did disappoint last weekend. This sizable drop isn’t going to help things, either. Touching on what Christian Toto noted in his excellent article this week, remakes in general may very well be on their way to being “old hat.” Audiences are craving something new without constant repetition of things they really never had much interest in to start with.

5. Johnny English Reborn ($6 million) - Much like ‘Nanny McPhee Returns,’ this one isn’t really drawing high anticipation. The marketplace has plenty of room for these type of comedies, but this one looks more like an unneeded sequel as opposed to a tantalizing new direction for the genre . Don’t expect ‘Red’-like results here.

Agree on this week’s calls?  Or do you feel we’ve missed something?

“When this thing is over,” her obsessed husband replies. This franchise is far from over, even if its best days may be behind it.

The third chapter in the sleeper film series can’t measure up to the previous installments. But its signature gimmick – staring at security camera footage until things that shouldn’t be moving start moving on their own – remains a nerve-jangling affair.

Horror movies exhaust themselves with digital effects, torrents of blood and other genre flourishes. All ‘Paranormal Activity 3′ needs is a creaking door or a flapping bed sheet to make us recoil in our seats.

While the first ‘Paranormal’ film served as both a prequel and sequel, the new installment falls squarely in the former camp. We already know Katie and Kristi (Katie Featherston and Sprague Grayden) will be haunted by evil spirits, but part 3 tells us it’s been happening to them all their lives.

The magic of VHS technology takes us back to the year 1988, a time when the girls’ step father, Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith), captured all of life’s quiet moments with his VHS camcorder. One night, Dennis tries to film an intimate moment with his wife (Lauren Bittner), but their passions are interrupted by an earthquake.

When Dennis views the footage of the botched sex tape he sees a strange shape lurking in the bedroom. So he sets his camera up to videotape the room while they sleep to see if he can capture anything else that doesn’t belong in the budoir. He hooks up a separate camera in the girls’ bedroom.

What follows is but a slight variation on the last two films. Lights go on and off. Doors open and close. One nice new wrinkle involves a camera set on an oscillating fan, a conceit that allows us to slowly pan a room while waiting for the next small-scale scare.

What’s stunning about all three ‘Activity’ features is their sense of economy. The budgets remain microscopic, and the casts are filled with unknowns. But boy, will you get startled by what you see.

The secret ingredient is stillness, both of sight and sound. Audiences wait – and wait – for something to happen. And that often means peering at the screen like a scientist hoping a cell seen under the microscope behaves as promised.

Audiences won’t need a special lens to spot the film’s glaring defects. We’re supposed to buy that Dennis, a wedding photographer by trade, sets up cameras to watch him watching videos. Like every other found footage shocker, the main characters never put down the bulky camera when its time to run for their lives. It’s hard not to be ripped right out of the story after one convoluted rationale for recording video replaces another.

And even when Dennis collects indisputable proof that the house is haunted he still sticks around to tape another day.

The new film hints at the context behind the frights, but it’s delivered in a slap dash manner meant to fuel future installments.

It’s hard not to be cynical regarding the future of this popular franchise. Hollywood churned out seven ‘Saw’ films long after the franchise had curdled, and no one can say for certain that we’ll never see another ‘Friday the 13th’ or ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ features in our lifetime.

But if you go to horror movies simply to jump in your seat, ‘Paranormal Activity 3′ delivers the goods. And here’s betting the fourth, fifth and sixth installments will do the same.

No blood.  No monsters.  Just our own imagination tweaked by the single cam format, a sub-genre leveraged years later by Quarantine, Cloverfield, and Paranormal Activity.

Those films wouldn‘t exist unless Blair Witch proved the format could draw audiences in.

Made on the uber-cheap by a pair of unknown filmmakers, Blair Witch was nothing less than a sensation when it hit theaters 11 years ago. It was the ultimate word of mouth hit without recognizable stars, just a savvy Internet campaign that hinted that what you were about to see actually happened. Everything coalesced into a bracingly original experience, something impossible to recapture today.

That makes the just-released Blu-ray release a chance to appreciate a groundbreaking film, but not a moment to jump out of our seats all over again. The scares simply aren’t the same as they once were. That leaves a curious film, one that still commands our attention but cannot help but disappoint when compared to timeless shockers like The Omen and The Exorcist.

What emerges is a precursor to our reality television age, when everyone is armed with a video camera and few thoughts remain private.

The story remains a model of simplicity. Three young filmmakers head into the woods of rural Maryland to explore the myth of the Blair Witch. Locals say the creature has haunted the area for decades, a hairy half-man, half-beast who slaughters children and adults alike.

The filmmakers quickly get lost despite the map wrangling of their unofficial leader, Heather (Heather Donahue). They’re forced to camp out several nights straight, and each time they go to bed they hear odd noises and wake to find their camp site changed in small but peculiar ways.

Is someone pulling a prank on them, or is the Blair Witch prepping for the kill?

Much of the film’s dialogue feels unforced and raw, which helps the illusion that these three no-name actors might really be the real deal – filmmakers who died pursuing their art. That’s hooey, of course, but it was part of what made the film special during its theatrical run.

The script doesn’t give us much insight into the characters, a flaw that grew worse over time. They bicker about directions and how Heather refuses to put her camera down, but the arguments rarely reflect on the characters. It pushes the story forward, but when their lives are imperiled, it doesn’t make it easier to root for a possible rescue.

Only Mike (Michael C. Williams) is given a semblance of a character arc, growing from a passive soul to someone who takes measures to keep the trio sane.

The cam format allows for some confessional moments, and it’s hard not to think about those reality show rants when Heather turns the camera on herself to apologize for getting her friends in such a mess.

The extras include four alternate endings, each offering little in the way of new shocks, plus the antiquated short about the “true story“ behind the “Witch.” What’s missing is an extensive “making of” feature, or even one showing the film’s legacy from the perspective of film historians.

The Blair Witch Project can’t scare us silly any longer, but the film still matters to horror fans all the same.

But what would happen if you stopped believing in the devil – and even felt you had the means and a mission to prove he doesn’t exist – only to find out that you might be wrong and it might be too late to ever regain a strong enough belief to save yourself from his attack?

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That’s the creepy question underlying the new horror film “The Last Exorcism,” in which a former child preacher named Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who became famous for casting out demons, has grown up to be a sarcastic con artist scamming people out of their hard-earned dollars with fake ceremonies and false promises.

But after years of deception, Marcus has become wracked with guilt after hearing of a young girl who died after undergoing an exorcism, and as a result he’s hired a film crew to follow him on one last job in an attempt to reveal on-camera just how fake exorcisms are and teach people that the devil is just a figment of our collective imaginations. He picks a request by the Sweetzer family, who live down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and heads out to “free” their teenage daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) and prove that her bizarre behavior has nothing to do with possession.

Well, anyone who has seen the film’s creepy posters and bus ads knows that Nell ain’t going to go quietly. Soon, she’s veering between her normal sweet disposition and a vicious rage that leads her to slice Cotton’s hand, climb the walls and talk like an ogre – and we haven’t even gotten to the fact she shows up with a catatonic stare in the hotel room of a crew member despite the fact they’re miles away and never told her where they were staying.

Cotton suddenly realizes he might be having to tangle with Satan after all, but his lack of faith may very well have rendered him powerless. With one twisted moment after another spinning out of control, viewers are left to wonder if he can pull salvation back from the brink.

“The Last Exorcism” follows in the footsteps of other famous horror mockumentaries like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity,” but it scores on several levels above and beyond those prior efforts. “Blair” was almost entirely raw-looking and drew its fear-mongering from its normal-young-adult protagonists slowly losing their minds and cool while hopelessly trapped in some desolate woods, while “Paranormal” relied on dispassionate security-style footage to convey its dance with the dark side.

But “Exorcism” has a vibrant and charismatic lead to follow while still maintaining the feel and appearance of being utterly real. It’s the slicker-looking, professional feel of the footage that makes the gambit work so well, because it makes it easy for the viewer to think as long as pros are involved in the film’s story, nothing can get too crazy. They’ll know how to handle anything, right? Right?

“Exorcism” also has an inherent wit that was utterly lacking in its forebears, as Cotton tries to keep his wisecracking cool throughout when the Sweetzer family’s not looking. Director Daniel Stamm and writers Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland wisely chose total unknowns for the leads, which is key to the effectiveness of the genre, and dole out the scares in a tasteful enough fashion that amazingly keeps the film at a PG13 rating while being utterly terrifying as it spins ever further into darkness.

For secular horror-movie fans, “Exorcism” is a terrific work of terror. But for Christians, the movie harbors a worldview that is disconcerting in much deeper ways.

SPOILER ALERT (not of plot details as much as broad ideas): While Cotton Marcus offers a fresh twist on the timeworn character of a hypocritical minister, his depiction in the film will probably only serve to further secular-minded viewers’ idea of Christian leaders as charlatans. Even as he starts to realize the evil he’s facing is real, he can’t quite seem to regain his beliefs, leaving the film to bear the message that evil reigns supreme.

That may not come as much of a surprise to those who are wise enough to shy away from Hollywood’s often pointlessly gruesome excuses for horror in the slasher-film genre. But when that message is at the heart of a film like “Exorcism” that is vastly better made than most horror films, Christian viewers should be warned that it risks leaving a lasting impression on their minds. I saw the film two months ago at a film festival, and I still can’t quite shake it. And while it might have been the filmmakers’ goal, that’s probably not a good thing for my soul.

—– 

Before actually viewing it, the conceit of the film’s concept — having the events all caught on a home video camera — turned me off. But in this case, my prejudice towards gimmicks and Internet hype failed. If seeing this skillfully crafted low-budgeter at home made me wish I hadn’t given up my stuffed bunny Rudy when I was 15, seeing it in a theatre must’ve been twice the experience.

Horror is my favorite genre. The problem is that effectively and honestly terrifying your audience is in my opinion the most difficult thing for a film to do. Which is why truly worthy horror films come around so rarely. When they do work, however, there is no better movie-viewing experience. And the original “Paranormal” not only works but proves that even with no budget a skilled filmmaker — in this case writer/director Oren Peli — can freeze you cold with nothing more than the movement of a bedroom door.

Peli’s film is also intelligently scripted. The story moves towards an unexpected but still logical conclusion and the relationship between the two twenty-something protagonists is just complicated and tense enough to make you believe they wouldn’t run screaming out of the house. Problem numero uno with haunted house stories is making sense of why no one ever leaves, or at least crafting the film well enough that the audience doesn’t roll their collective eyes as if to say,”It’s called the Holiday Inn, morons.”

Peli wrote but doesn’t direct the sequel. Thankfully, from the look of the trailer, it looks as though #2 will at least hang on to the concepts and ideas that made its predecessor so worthy of a follow up. My guess is that everyone learned not to mess with a winning formula after the botched sequel to 1999’s equally terrific “Blair Witch Project” — another hair raising, out-of-nowhere, low-budget chiller with a similar concept – failed so miserably.

Some of you might remember that “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” had about as much in common with #1 as the L.A. Times does with journalism.  

The new film, enjoying a brief theatrical release before jumping to DVD Nov. 17, doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as spin said wheel as smoothly as possible for nearly two tense hours. Yuppie newlyweds Lori (Yvonne Strahovski) and Nick (Eion Bailey) want to see the Grand Canyon via mule, but they don’t have the permits necessary to make the trek.

Enter Henry (Will Patton), a grizzled local who promises he can secure two permits and guide them to some of the canyon’s lesser known sites. Nick can’t wait. He’s a city slicker at heart, and a rough and tumble trip through a tourist trap’s hidden side is an intoxicating challenge.

Henry knows the terrain, and has the scars to prove it, but even a savvy outdoors type can’t prepare for everything the canyon has to offer. Disaster soon strikes, leaving the newlyweds at the mercy of their surroundings.

“The Canyon” doesn’t stray far from the “innocents vs. the wild” narrative, but director Richard Harrah maneuvers through familiar terrain with impressive skill. Harrah can’t massage some of the dialogue between the love birds, which ranges from touching to tortured.

Screenwriter Steve Allrich provides some gripping confrontations, and never do the main players take a “Rambo” turn for the ridiculous. But Allrich doesn’t provide a compelling backstory for the couple, even if he hints at a few tasty subplots that never fully develop.

The aerial camera work keeps reminding us the odds stacked against our heroes, but this plucky duo won’t go down without a fight.

Consider “The Canyon” another small budget, small expectations thriller that manages to outperform a good chunk of its bigger pocketed peers.

Back in 1999, a movie called “The Blair Witch Project” burst into the American pop culture consciousness from seemingly nowhere.  It appeared to be (and was marketed to viewers as) a raw documentary film about three student filmmakers and their tragic last days experiencing supernatural forces while lost in the wilderness, but in reality it was a fictional film made for under $30,000 by a team of indie filmmakers and actors and had caused a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival months before. 

The resulting hysteria of “was that real or not?” among the average, uninformed horror-film fans drove the film to a massive $150 million gross in the US alone, and inspired dozens of spoof films and cheapo horror films in its wake. But no one’s been able to catch that lightning in a bottle of mass mental manipulation twice – until now. 

“Paranormal Activity” uses the same conceit of “found footage” depicting the tragic consequences of supernatural attacks on seemingly normal people. In this case, it follows the events that befall young shacked-up couple Micah (Micah Stone) and Katie (Katie Featherston) after Micah buys a video camera in an attempt to see whether they can catch on video exactly what’s causing awful noises to waft through their apartment and doors to slam viciously while they sleep at night. 

Katie is more inclined to believe there’s a supernatural element to things than the skeptical Micah, partly because she reveals that she’s experienced strange behavior before from what seemed like spirits at other times in her life, no matter where she’s moved. Micah starts to believe pretty soon as well, however, especially after he leaves a Ouija board out and notices that it’s very definitely been used for a message from the beyond. Soon, a paranormal expert comes over to check things out and says he definitely thinks there’s trouble brewing. 

“Paranormal” uses a string of subtle effects to convey the slow yet steadily growing horror felt by the couple as they experience all manner of noises, slammed doors, shaken chandeliers, flipped-on TVs and eventually the sight of hideous claw marks in some strategically placed powder on the bedroom floor. The lead actors are total unknowns making their feature film debuts, effectively adding to the feeling that this is real rather than a predictable cinematic adventure sure to be survived by a star like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie. 

And yet, while first-time writer-director Oren Peli crafts a haunting, desolate look for the film with its frequent use of shadowy night footage, very few moments of the film provide a true scare that makes audience members jump out of their seats or shriek in terror. Having seen it with a crowd of mostly underage teenagers who should have been perfect targets for a truly scary film, I can attest that the loudest freakouts of the film – other than its undeniably disturbing final moments – came when audience members dropped bottles loudly at tense moments, provoking false panic immediately followed by whoops of laughter, and at the film’s conclusion, a chorus of disappointed comments. 

That reaction was surprising, because distributor Paramount Pictures is turning “Paranormal” into a box-office juggernaut by using a viral Internet campaign in which a million people had to electronically “demand” the film be released widely before the studio would release it nationally (surprise, the campaign worked). Having seen through the hype after surviving a screening, one can only hope that the “demand” won’t keep growing once word gets out about its almost-nonexistent plotline and simply sporadic scares. 

Advance hype in a Los Angeles Times’ article on the film stated that Steven Spielberg himself went crazy for “Paranormal,” finding it so terrifying that he believed his advance screening tape was haunted and that he brought it back to his office the next day wrapped in a plastic trash bag for fear of touching it. If this is what terrifies the legendary director of “Jaws” and writer of “Poltergeist” these days, then perhaps he’s made a few too many family films. 

He should have also kept the tape in the trash bag and spared the rest of us our ten dollars.