Paranormal Activity 2

So my bad, I actually watched this movie several weeks ago and then completely forgot to write anything down about it. Which unfortunately means I'll be going off of what I remember from when I viewed it, which while I think I can still provide a good analysis, it may not be as good as when it was fresh in my head. Nonetheless...

We quickly learn that this sequel is actually a prequel, following the story of the sister of the main girl from the first one, her husband, her daughter, her little baby, and their dog. The beginning actually starts off rather confusingly as we get from a very quick transition with almost no explanation that we've suddenly jumped forward a couple weeks that their house was broken into, thus necessitating a security system that watches over the house. From that point on most of the scary footage comes from those cameras, with snippets of handheld in-between.

As in the first one, weird things start happening on a low level. The pool cleaner mysteriously ends up out of the pool each morning, seemingly on its own. There are thumps in the night. And then as time goes on and the family starts getting more and more freaked out, scarier and scarier crap keeps happening. Oddly enough though, I thought it started out much more strongly than the first, which was almost to its detriment as from that point on they had to try and get scarier than that. And while at some points they certainly managed it, it was odd to start the foray into madness with such a big event.

Underneath all the hubbub, however, are some rather interesting revelations about why the things that happened in the first movie happened and why this demon is terrorizing them all. I won't spoil anything here, because I think this was worth viewing, but the ending in particular I thought was a really great ending. It's unexpected, different, and yet totally makes sense within the context of the story they've presented. In the first one there was the infamous change from the kinda boring but very interesting original ending to the Spielberg scary as hell but really cliche ending (a change they're sticking with in this one), neither of which really felt right. The second, however, hits it right on the head.

In terms of the rest of the production, the actors are once again average though certainly good at acting scared, the choppiness we get in the timeline from one handicam shot to the next is a little jarring and makes it hard to keep up with what's going on, and the scares themselves while bigger are not necessarily better. That isn't to say it wasn't scary, it just wasn't as effective as the first one since for this one you basically know you're going to hear footsteps in the night and watch people get dragged. And yet, I liked it better than the first, particularly because it made up for those faults by having an actually interesting story, and an ending that just plain worked.

Basically, this sequel/prequel retained many of the problems of the first, yet also improved upon it. From where this one ended I doubt there will be a third, but who knows, maybe they'll finally strike the right balance between small, unpredictable scares that build tension and big scares that can only have a big impact for a short period of time. The first favored the small at the expense of the large except for the end, while the second favored the big at the expense of those small moments that really hammer in the suspense. I suppose it's a balance that all good horror must find, and the second did better at it than the first, but still had its share of problems. In the end...

Paranormal Activity 2 gets a 7.5/10