JiggyJay's Full Review: Paranormal State: The Complete Season Three [3 Dis...
I quickly hopped on the Paranormal State bandwagon earlier this year when I was watching television with my older brother. He was really into the show, but I scoffed saying that Ghost Hunters was THE ghost show available on TV. Alas, we watched entire episode--a rerun from the first season-and I was struck by how produced the show was. I didn't know if I was watching an episode of A Haunting or an actual documentary on a family being haunted. I chose to investigate this further and over the course of the year watched the first two seasons and with the third just recently being released.
Unlike Ghost Hunters, the hit show on the Sci-Fi Channel (screw that SyFy moniker), A&E's Paranormal State is less as scientifically accurate as it is spiritually intense. Ryan Buell is the leader of the Paranormal Research Society and with the help of his team goes to homes where severe paranormal activity has been reported. Most of these cases involve demon possession, sometimes evil Native American spirits, or the like instead of a simple familiar haunt.
His team are technically savvy and a lot of infrared cameras are set up around a place to catch activity and each member have cameras to try and document their experiences, but unlike Ghost Hunters these guys rarely walk away with much proof-especially with the third season, which appears to be the weakest season as far as evidence is concerned.
Throughout this season, PRS calls upon their psychic Chip Coffey and famed demonologist Lorraine Warren (yes, THE Lorraine Warren) like in previous seasons, but they bothered me this time around as if they are completely full of their own crap.
Which leads me to the biggest controversy related to the show: is this show fake? After some reports over the internet have come out citing the unprofessionalism of the producers and the like I have started to think that the show has gotten mightily full of itself and written too much-at least more than what it started with in the first two seasons. It's a shame because this show used to be much better but with the third season many of the episodes seem too spiced up as if they took a small case and made it bigger than it was.
Fake or not this show is entertaining for us paranormal fans. While I can mock the overproduction of the show with added sound effects, too creative editing to get scares from the audience, and stuff of the sort that lowers its reliability-it all makes for great television and at the end of the day I am very entertained by the episodes. Even if you take away the fact that a lot of these episodes here might be over exaggerated or fake you still have to say that the writing is pretty terrifying with a lot of scary stuff happening in this season.
One episode has Ryan and his crew go to a vacation lodge in New York that's creepily located in the middle of the woods with some weird activity reported. Another episode takes them to a Fire Department haunted by a firefighter who's sticking around for some reason. Coffey is called in to help investigate and it leads to one of the saddest moments in the show's history. After a brain aneurism, a door might've been opened in an Alabama home leading to the mother being haunted by her abusive father (another heart-wrenching episode).
An autistic boy is being haunted by a dead boy. PRS goes to Kentucky to a home haunted by a young girl that may have something to do with a murder from years prior. One of the scariest episodes puts the team in an old abandoned church that has been a center for Satan worship and a demon may be lurking...In a two-part episode the team is investigating a demon possession case when it leads full circle back to a case from the previous season involving a girl who have to be exorcised (another controversy for another review). The last episode of the season pits the team against a haunting that keeps clawing at the man of the house where the Buell and his team must figure out the history of the house and the inhabitants inside it. This is definitely one of the creepiest Paranormal State episodes.
The only real fault I can claim is that a lot of the people featured in these episodes seem to be spruced up by the producers to do things for the cameras. Things will be added like them screaming or something before a commercial break only to not have it appear in the actual episode, which was a little lame, but again--this is television they need to give the mood to the audience.
If you've ever seen an episode of this show then you will know what to expect. This is the same format of the previous two seasons, but it doesn't hurt the show that much. It's still an interesting show with many parts that are pretty terrifying if you can look past the docudrama aspect of it or the spruced up realism that they are trying to get at.
Fans of Ghost Hunters will definitely get a kick out of this show as it's more religious with the team blessing the house after each haunting, sometimes battling demons with priests, and the like. Halloween's almost here and this would be the perfect show to have on to set the mood, but be warned-it gets a little creepy. I live in the city with cars and sounds all around me yet sometimes I see things reflected off my window in the middle of the night...
The Paranormal Research Society takes on some of their most terrifying cases yet in the creepy third season of AE's PARANORMAL STATE. Together with a ...More at Family Video
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