Karl Puschmann: Haters, come back to some frighteningly good 3D

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension uses 3D in clever ways. Photo / Supplied

The polarising 3D format is coming into its own just in time for Halloween, writes Karl Puschmann.

With Halloween fast approaching, I decided to get the jump on the frights and start early this year.

A lot of miserable killjoys get all "bah humbug" about this frightfully good annual festivity.

Not me. I love it. Yes, it may be imported nonsense but as most of the stuff I love falls under that definition I'm totally down with it.

To get properly into the spirit before the big day, I went and saw two terrifying horror flicks.

The first was 99 Homes, a film that feels like an eerily prescient portent of what's in store for Auckland's terrifying housing market.

It follows a ruthless real estate broker who preys on mortgagee sales, mercilessly evicting people and their families at the first whiff of a missed payment.

As a mortgage holder myself I don't mind telling you that the movie scared the bejebus out of me, leaving me unable to sleep for nights and instilling a new, deep-rooted fear of bankers, my bank account and my own house. Scary stuff.

The second horror flick I saw was The Walk and oh good lawd was it spine-chilling.

It's based on high-wire artist and French loon Philippe Petit's bonkers mission to hang his wire between New York's magnificent Twin Towers and then walk across.

Essentially it's a glitzy, Hollywood-ised retelling of the sublime documentary Man on Wire from a few years back, right down to the narrative structure and classical music selection.

But what makes it worth seeing - and one of the scariest films going - is its total embrace of the third dimension.

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt hams it up throughout with his "Oui-oui monsieur" accent, but I assure you there is nothing to laugh about when he steps on to that thin wire and begins Petit's historic, hubristic walk.

Never before has a film generated such total vertigo, such a real and visceral sense of height and elevation and such a total and concrete understanding of the consequences that falling would have.

This climactic scene, which seems to never end, was just blood curdling. I was physically gripping my seat, silently urging the mad frog to get off his bloody wire and return to the safety of the building. He doesn't.

Instead, he fools about, taunting both the fuzz and fate while the camera swirls and swooshes and plunges and plummets and does all sorts of other neat, nefarious tricks to put you right up there with him, 110 storeys high, above the ground.

It's horrifying, nauseating, wonderful.

It's also not at all possible in standard 2D. There's simply not enough Ds. As a movie-going experience I have no doubt that The Walk would fall failingly flat in a standard screening.

Now, finally, as a format 3D is where it's at. After an undoubtedly shaky start full of outlandish promises and a disgraceful el-cheapo cash-in period, I firmly believe we have entered the beginnings of 3D's golden age.

Sure, Avatar got in first, but I wasn't sold on 3D until Life of Pi.

Its psychedelic, deep-ocean, universe-exploding sequence converted me. But the real renaissance started with Gravity, an utterly gripping and tense technical marvel that would be unwatchable garbage in 2D.

It signalled the end of the storybook, pop-up effect that plagued early post-production conversion efforts like Tim Burton's rubbish Alice in Wonderland. Although The Walk masterfully indulged in one, leading me to jump out of my seat in the belief my eye was about to be gouged.

But what I'm really excited about is Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. This will be my Halloween-night viewing and I'm extremely looking forward to once again being scared out of my seat at the cinema.

What makes it look so ... well, good, isn't the right word, let's say interesting, is the unique implementation of the third dimension as a narrative tool.

I avoid all spoilers but the trailer seems to show the cast being terrorised in 2D while the poltergeists haunt them in 3D. It looks terrific and terrifying and an absolutely fantastic idea.

As film-makers begin pushing 3D out of our faces and into the fringes of the expected the format is only going to get more essential to the moviegoing experience.

The time has come to stop hating on 3D. Instead, embrace it. Don't be scared. Unless, of course, that's the film-makers' intention.

* Thoughts on 3D? Post your comments below!