“Nothing can prepare you for this”… unless you saw the first movie.
“Nothing can prepare you for this”… unless you saw the first movie.
I was psyched for Paranormal Activity 2 and was afraid it was going to scare me. I liked the first one and found it effective and scary. Granted, you have to watch it in the right context. Alone in your living room all the way through or in a crowded movie theater. If you watched it while checking e-mail, doing yoga or shut it off every 10 minutes to check your pot roast, you may have not gotten the full effect. Does anyone cook pot roast anymore? Just curious.
Anyway, the plot, which I’m sure looked good on paper, was to make a prequel/sequel that happened concurrently with the first movie and involves Katie’s sister and her family. On screen, it’s pretty weak as you see loose ends try to be tied up in a neat, contrived and silly bow.
Weak acting, lame rehashed premise and scares, and annoying plot contrivances will make you want to skip this, even if you liked the first one. Loud banging! OK, that still makes you jump but again, we’ve seen… OK heard it before.
MINOR SPOILER ALERT UNLESS YOU HAVE A BRAIN IN YOUR HEAD: There are some truly laughable moments here. Not intentionally, but needed to push the contrived plot forward. Things like the entity liking to pull the motorized pool filter out of the pool every night. Whoah, scary. My favorite was when the skeptical husband (of course) notices that his wife is sick, she can’t get out of bed, his daughter is scared to death, there may be a demon in the house, the dog had a seizure and the baby seems to cry a lot. But he has a meeting and has to go to work. Dude has his priorities.
The most unbelievable parts weren’t the scary stuff, they were the actual flesh and blood people and the stupid things they do. You’ll be going WHAT?! and rolling your eyes. A lot.
The first hour is when fake tension builds up and you know the movie isn’t even going to get going until someone says “Do you believe me now?” (sigh) So you have an hour of the fake out scares and tension that builds slowly. It would be passable if that wasn’t exactly what we saw in the first one.
The truth is, there is simply nothing new in this movie. Except a baby and a dog. It’s like when they added Bat-Mite. What’s the point? I get the need for corporations to make money, but generally you are supposed to offer a product in exchange. Paranormal Activity 2 is the New Coke of movies. It’s not very good, it’s not really new, and we liked the old Coke better anyway.
I loved the Yahoo News headline “Critics Call Paranormal Activity 2 Scarier Than the First.” What it should read is “Critics Who Don’t Know Anything About Movies Call Paranormal Activity 2 Scarier Than Losing Their Jobs.” The real critics like AP and Roger Ebert were not as impressed. Don’t believe the hype.
Paranormal Activity 2 is a studio’s version of a scary indie horror film that cost three million dollars. It was certainly not spent on special effects or locations. So where do you think that money went? (bloated studio and producer salaries, cough cough) So it’s pretty much off the mark and tries so hard to copy the creepy cool of the first one you just think “wow, you’re trying too hard, rich kid, and you just don’t get it.” The movie just fails. Remember support indie film! But you don’t have to support the soulless studio copy of it.
—Chris Mancini
