ReviewAfter someone breaks into their house a family set up six security cameras to ensure they will capture any further break-ins on film. Gradually they discover that the unexplained events happening around their house has a far more sinister aspect to it than simply being the work of burglars. Can daughter Ali convince her unbelieving father Dan and not wanting to know mother Kristi that something supernatural is haunting their home or will baby Hunter get a new diabolic guardian.And just to keep things interesting Micah and Katie from the first movie are back in this sequel/prequel where the answers are not what we may have expected! Director Tod Williams was tossed the ball to see if he could revisit the fountain and achieve the commercial success of the first movie, or perhaps mix metaphors even. Williams manages to touch bases with what made the first movie successful, but in the wash up delivers a movie that is only going to be partially acceptable to fans of the original. If you didn't like the original Paranormal Activity it's taken for granted you wont like the sequel in any shape or form. More of the same although this time we know exactly what is coming hence there's not the same level of unease available to Director Williams. For great lengths of the movie, right up till the final act in fact, things are moving at a slow almost glacial pace with little to nothing really happening beyond the sort of home movies you would expect from family gatherings. Williams switches between the six angles offered by the security cameras again and again, guaranteeing the audience are waiting for something to happen with each sequence of camera angles. Like the first movie, Williams is relying on the audience freaking itself out while he gradually tightens the screws. So we sit for quite sometime in a kitchen till a pot falls off an overhead hanger. Unfortunately the effect isn't overly scary and there's 101 natural explanations. Perhaps this is the point. The highlight of this approach is the pool creepy crawly that refuses to stay in the water cleaning overnight. Guess Williams is building up to a jump scene there, just like one that comes in the kitchen, but the jump was being broadcast well before it arrived reducing the effect. There's only so much you can do with video camera angles till people get wise to the approach and are waiting on something with a lot more boo for their bucks. The actual volume goes up each time a jump scene is coming so if even slightly distracted you are going to pick the chills and thrills way before they lumber onto the screen. When things do heat up finally, after an hour or so, Williams goes buck wild naked with the shock scenes. Guess though putting a dog and a toddler in harm's way would have got under a lot of peoples skins prior to Ali facing the supernatural on her own. There's an inherent feel of danger throughout that ensures the audience are not going to be particular sure that any of the characters will get out of it alive. Speaking of Ali, was it just me or did she disappear for great chunks of time, particularly in the last block of the movie? Besides the film stock being naturally grainy, recorded tapes, everything happens at night while people are asleep. Do you know what happens in your household after you hit the hay? A lot of people are attacking the movie due to father Dan not checking the recorded tapes for freaky stuff, however would you sit through hour after hour of tape to maybe find something you didn't acknowledge in the first place? What works for the movie, just like the first one, is that we are dealing with ordinary people who don't appear to be acting. The prerequisite here is to allow the audience to fool themselves into believing they are watching found footage and not a movie. Not entirely sure the gimmick worked the second time round, but you have to be happy with a movie that is attempting to get away from the Hollywood standard crap without falling into the Cloverfield swamp. On the cool side of the crucifix the mythology is maintained between both movies. In order for the demon to gain a foothold someone needs to contact it by the ever popular ouiji phone. In the first movie Micah thinks that would be a great idea and Ali backs his thinking up in the sequel. Actually this doesn't go against a lot mythology, demonic powers must be recognised to have power, so there's sort of a basis in reality. And before I forget the man of the house in both movies is something of a dickhead. Ali's investigation into all things demonic actually gives us something of a background to both movies and a possible reason for demonic powers focusing on both Katie and Kristi. The Mexican maid Martine certainly knows there's something evil in the household and is taking preliminary exorcism precautions much to Dan's ire. There's an ending to the sequel that works after the fact of the first movie and adds a shocking conclusion that is going to be fairly devastating to some people. Without dialling into the hundred and one other issues with this monstrosity, no pun intended, of a movie, a couple of plot holes you could drive a giant monster through, pun intended. Rob and his band of whingers – do all Americas moan and whinge this much? – travel all across what I guess is Manhattan, and wouldn’t you know it but the giant monster seems to be constantly hot on their heels. It’s like they have a monster attraction device or something going down. Let’s be honest here, any other movie that wasn’t considered in some fanboy alternative reality as “art” would have been hung, drawn, and quartered over that development. Throughout the film it’s like the monster has a personal vendetta against Rob’s merry band of yuppie posers, guess it got irritated by them as well. I found Paranormal Activity 2 to be a decent enough sequel to the first movie though it was way to slow in places to the point of being on the boring side of the equation. Waiting an eternity for a frying pan to fall off a kitchen hook might work for some people but I was less than impressed, maybe due to growing up in an area prone to earth quakes and the old kitchen rocking on some evenings. When the action does go down it's fairly intense stuff, yes I jumped in a couple of places, and keeps up the chill factor from Paranormal Activity. Overall I was happy to catch up with the sequel and am ready to sign onto a third movie, which has no doubt been given the green-light treatment following the massive profit margins both first movies have generated. I would drop what ever activity you are currently involved in and check out another dose of paranormal activities.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... A sequel worth the wait, bring on the third movie!
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