Friday, April 22, 2011

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)



SYNOPSIS

In a space of time starting just a few months before the events shown in the first film, a family return home to an apparent burglary attempt. Nothing seems to have been taken other than a necklace belonging to the mother's sister (Katie, from the first film). Soon afterward, strange things start to happen - their Hispanic nanny starts to talk about evil spirits, they notice things moving around the house and going bump in the night. As the time of the first film approaches, certain similarities start to make themselves known...

REVIEW


For my money, the first Paranormal Activity was a masterpiece of modern horror. There was a certain level of backlash, just as with The Blair Witch Project (another movie I enjoyed a lot), but the film was, in my mind, incredibly effective. This might be partly because - due to the difficulties of getting hold of English language cinema screenings in my area - I "obtained" the original screener version. That is, I saw the film with the original, much more effective, ending, alone in the dark in my apartment. It scared the absolute shit out of me, which is why it takes pride of place in my Blu-Ray collection now.

I tried to recreate those conditions with this film, but sadly the film just isn't as good. Shot on a much higher budget, the film tries to expand out the story of the first film by having multiple characters and multiple cameras around the house. This way, we switch between multiple static security cameras, and also get certain character points of view with handheld cameras when things really ramp up.

The problem with this is that we have too much going on, and it dilutes the razor sharp narrative that made the first so effective. There, we had a simple back-and-forth between two characters and saw the changing dynamic within the couple's relationship during the day. Each night, we returned to the same static shot, and were left with bated breath for each scare, scanning the darkness of the doorway, wondering what might come next.

With this sequel, we have a lot of characters - parents, daughters, housekeepers, a dog, a baby... The film has to spend a little bit too much time setting things up and suffers for this in the opening third. When things do start to happen, the multiple cameras dilute the scares, as the anticipation is lost to some degree. Yeah, we see everything from a levitating baby to the family pet being attacked by an invisible force, but it seems somehow silly without the buildup.

Having said that, it's one of the better "found footage" movies that has come along recently. It's worth a watch, and ultimately ties in with the original in some interesting ways. Starting about an hour in, there are some genuinely creepy moments and a few very effective jump scares. By that point, however, the film had pretty much lost mean and the end is rather convoluted. Here's to the third movie, hoping they get on track...

6 / 10

Back In The Saddle

Well... life and various other things happened to stop me from updating this blog. Well, they stopped me from watching movies, to be honest! Now, I'm back on a more regular schedule so I've decided to get this back up and running. You can see some of my more recent film watching at 80s Fear, where I talk about my trip to Frightfest Glasgow and occasional more in depth reviews of older movies. For everything else, it'll be here, starting with a new review today and then every day following...