Paranormal Activity 2

When I reviewed Paranormal Activity exactly one year ago, I called it "an ingenious little horror film that plays upon our fears of the dark and the unknown". When you think about it, there's no way that Paranormal Activity 2 could possibly live up to that. The sense of the unknown is gone. We've seen the first movie. We hold advance knowledge that the people up on the screen do not. All we can do is wait for the characters to catch on to what we already know, and for the inevitable outcome.

This is not very fun, as you can imagine. It also lessens the fear factor of the film itself. I walked into the original film knowing very little about it, so I was interested in learning just what was terrorizing young couple Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) as they slept at night. We got some answers, but the movie was smart enough to leave enough unexplained to heighten the mystery. In Paranormal Activity 2, we get even more answers, which once again lessens the fear factor of the film. When you shed a light on the dark and the unknown, it's just not that scary anymore. More than that, this is just not that exciting of a movie. I was never engaged, and never found myself worrying about any of the characters. Everyone seems to be going through the motions this time around, almost as if they're waiting for the invisible entity stalking them to do terrible things to them.

The basic set up is that this is a prequel to the original, set two months earlier. Although Micah and Katie do appear in supporting roles, the focus this time is on Katie's sister, Kristi (Sprague Grayden), her husband Daniel (Brian Boland), teenage daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim), and their new baby Hunter. They live in a sprawling suburban home that is vandalized one day, with every room trashed except for the baby's nursery. Fearing for his family's safety, Daniel installs a camera security system in the home. Since these cameras can see any room in the house at any time, and this movie is told from the point of view of these cameras, we lose the creepy impact of the original, where the camera was stationary for the most part, and things were usually happening just out of our sight. We get to see everything now as strange occurrences begin to happen around the home. Doors open and close by themselves, pots and pans fall from the racks, occasional loud banging can be heard, and poor little Hunter starts being visited by someone or something coming into his room at night.

The characters play the standard roles as expected. Daniel the husband is the skeptic, who refuses to believe the house is haunted until almost the last minute. Kristi and Ali slowly become terrified, but are afraid to talk about what they know. There's a Hispanic nanny who lives with the family, and fills the role of all ethnic characters in horror movies - She's the first to know something is wrong, holds mystical spiritual powers, and no one believes her when she tells them there is something evil in the house. Even the family dog plays the required role of barking and growling at seemingly nothing, only for the family to learn too late it was trying to warn them. All of this plays out at a sluggish pace. The original movie took it's time doling out the scares, but it at least held your attention, and let you know something was building. This time around, the movie doesn't so much build, but rather slogs through familiar material.

The movie counts down the passing days, just like before, but there's no real sense of growing dread like there was in the first film. Wouldn't Kristi and Ali be checking the cameras to see if it picked up anything the night before a lot more than they seem to? Wouldn't they be naturally concerned about little Hunter's safety, and watching the footage of his room like a hawk? Wouldn't they at least try to convince Daniel at least once that maybe they should get out of the house? Of course, Daniel wouldn't listen. He's written to be wrong about everything, to be a sarcastic jerk, and to ridicule and criticize his wife and teenage daughter at every opportunity. He exists so, I don't know, maybe we can cheer when he learns too late about the danger that's been right in front of him the entire time.

As for the film itself, it exists for an entirely different reason - Because the first one made $100 million during it's box office run. Okay, to be fair, it does try to add onto the story that the first film created. The question that nobody at the studio seemed to ask is did it need to be added onto? It worked as a simple cinematic campfire ghost story. We don't need a whole backstory and an explanation. We don't need to know how the childhood photo from the first movie got burned. Or why this invisible entity has chosen this particular family. Just give me some satisfying jolts and a creepy atmosphere, and I'm happy. Instead, this movie gives us a lot of empty jump scares, none of which are effective, except for one scene involving exploding cupboards.

I'm certain that this movie will have its defenders, and I'll probably be reviewing Paranormal Activity 3 this time next year. I'd be much happier if I wasn't, naturally. Paranormal Activity 2 is not the worst sequel to hit this year, but it sure is a lazy cash grab when you look back on it. It exists simply because somebody saw a franchise possibility. That somebody was wrong.

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