Review: Paranormal Activity 2

Set slightly before the events of “Paranormal Activity”, Sprague Grayden is Kristi, sister of Katie (played by Katie Featherston) from the first film. She and her hubby (Brian Boland, playing the biggest douche on the planet) have a baby boy. From time to time, Katie and her lover Micah (once again, Micah Sloat) drop by. Then all of a sudden, events in the house start to spook the family, which includes teen daughter Molly Ephraim (who is merely Grayden’s stepdaughter), and even their superstitious ‘ethnic stereotype’ maid (whom Boland mocks at every given opportunity, sensitive fella he is).

I rather liked the first “Paranormal Activity”, it was one of the better films of its type, and despite watching it in broad daylight, I still found it unsettling. This 2010 semi-prequel from director Tod Williams (“The Door in the Floor”) and writer Michael R. Perry is...unnecessary. Despite original cast members Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat being left on the periphery of the story this time, it’s still largely the same film. And that’s the problem. Because this is largely the same film, you really only pay attention to the night scenes because they are the only scenes where anything is going to happen. The result? An exceedingly tedious and pointless experience. It really ought to have been called “Paranormal Activity 1.25” because that’s as far as the film really advances from what we saw in the first film. I guess that’s great if you haven’t seen the first film, but why would you watch “Paranormal Activity 2” without having seen the first one?

It doesn’t help that the opening 20 minutes are really choppy and repetitive. Considering there are more characters this time, it means that no one grabs your interest, really (the father is especially poorly written and unlikeable), and we only get snippets of mindless chatter. The mindless chatter is bad enough, but why not give us the whole conversation at least? Being thrown into a conversation mid-sentence is just stupid filmmaking. Then again, why show so many dialogue-free scenes when nothing is happening? Do we really need that many shots of the Creepy Crawler in the fucking pool? How about calling in an editor at some point? I mean, when you’re gonna give a major role to the chick (Sprague Grayden) who played the female US President’s bitchy daughter on “24” (a pretty major character, albeit for one season), you’ve already surrendered any visions of realism you might’ve had, surely. A slow-build is one thing, but this is just full of time-wasting, and because we know the drill now, it becomes infuriatingly dull. We get objects falling and a self-slamming door in the first hour, and that’s it. And who in the hell thinks it’s a great idea to keep a big freakin’ German Shepherd in the same room as a baby? Yeah, genius idea that.

This film verges on being “Psycho” remake pointlessness, except this is a different film from the first...just nothing new, if you catch my meaning. And no impact. None whatsoever. At least the first film had the adorable Katie Featherston front and centre, a really likeable presence whom you had your interest and investment in. This one...well, it gives us Featherston in a bikini, so that’s definitely one improvement. She’s stacked too, which is awesome! I liked Molly Ephraim as the teen daughter, and think the film would’ve been better if it were predominantly from her POV. Unfortunately, she’s not in it much. The baby, meanwhile, is adorable, and steals the film. What does that tell you?

Most of the camerawork is also in a fixed position, which is good if you get headaches from handheld stuff. Most of the footage is from a security camera, and much like the first film, the camera just captures things coming into view, thus you aren’t being manipulated into looking anywhere. Other than that, this film sucks. For starters, when the camerawork we see isn’t the fixed security camera, it becomes difficult to work out who is doing the filming, because there’s more than one person with a camera. It’s also ridiculous that someone would still be holding a handheld camera throughout all of this mayhem. I bought it in “The Blair Witch Project” but it becomes ridiculous here.

The ‘boo!’ scenes just don’t work when you don’t care about anyone or anything. The one exception is a genuinely messed up scene where all the drawers, pots and pans etc., suddenly blow the fuck open and fall down. The problem is, because I wasn’t engaged, the scene isn’t as effective as it could’ve been. The climax is well-shot, but that’s kind of counter-productive to the realism, and by that point I didn’t care anyway.

So this film is the same damn thing to much lesser effect. I hope you made lots of money from this, you jerks.

Rating: D