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Paranormal Activity 2

★★★☆☆

Directed by: Tod Williams

Written by: Michael Perry, Christopher Landon and Tom Pabst

Based on characters created by: Oren Peli

Once upon a time, horror movies were my primarily trafficked genre flicks. This is during my death-don’t-scare-me late teenage years, during my rebellion against the fearfulness that defined a large chunk of my youth. Then in early adulthood horror films took a sharp turn from supernatural slasher pics (Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser) to the grim and gruesome real-world terrors (Final Destination, Hostel, Saw). I discussed my distaste for this kind of fear in my Scream 4 review but the point is, I grew out of horror movies in part because they changed but also because I no longer needed to prove I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, especially since I am now fully aware that sometimes there are genuinely bad things lurking in dimly lit places.

But there is a part of me that still appreciates that seat-gripping tension from a tautly executed scary movie. It’s hard to find ones that work for me anymore and frankly I don’t look for them too often, but I did like 2007’s Paranormal Activity enough to know that the unique supernatural realism angle works well and I was intrigued that they could work up some sequels.

Here’s the conceit that you have to cope with via your suspension of disbelief mechanism in both Paranormal Activity and the sequel: That occasionally when super intense and highly stressful things are happening, or even when subtle shared moments occur, someone will pick up a handheld video camera and capture it for posterity. The original tried to get around this by building into the plot Micah’s relentless obsession with capturing the strange occurrences on film and having Katie fight with him about it, which only sort of worked. Paranormal Activity 2 does a bit better with the concept by giving the family (in this case Katie’s sister Kristi and her husband, step-daughter and baby son) means, such that after an early incident at the start of the film, they install high-end low-light cameras inside and outside the house.

Of course, this introduces some issues as well since there are points at which it’s pretty obvious that the editing was done for dramatic effect when a different camera would necessarily have captured a more revealing shot of something but that vantage point is not shown. Additionally, a hand-held camera is still in use and there are a few captured conversations and moments involving this camera that don’t really make a lot of sense to be on tape (Kristi and Katie’s conversation about their childhood for example, is very relevant to the film’s progression but unlikely to have been captured on film). In any case, as I said this is something you have to deal with to enjoy these movies because as much as the films work on the basis of their simplicity and their ability to convince you of their plausibility, it’s clear how difficult it would be to build a cohesive narrative using only a handful of fixed cameras.

The best part about Paranormal Activity is the way the movie watching experience can be so visceral. These are, in essence, movies about non-action. There is an extraordinary amount of film time spent in both (though considerably less in the sequel than the original) where, quite intentionally, there is nothing happening on screen. The camera points at an empty room in the dead of night. And the audience waits. That’s it. It sounds incredibly boring but the effect is precisely the opposite because once the movie gets going whenever those dead space sequences pop up, you start scanning the scene frantically, looking for where the titular activity is going to come in. Your body tenses up, and the whole experience of watching the film is somehow wonderfully exhausting.

A few points of comparison with the first film: The same “how’d they do that?” effects wizardry is on display here and, as with the first, the filmmakers make good choices in not returning to any wells, no matter how impressive a scene is. With the exception of one effect cribbed from the first movie (which works to tie the two together a bit) there is no instance of a set-piece effect that is re-created later on just because it looked cool in the first place. A good example is a shocking scene that takes place with Kristi alone in the kitchen and another instance of an encounter featuring the step-daughter Ali as she lies sleeping on the couch. To PA2’s credit, it never quite dips into the quasi-cheeseball territory the first one did (something about hoofprints?) although late in the film the line between supernatural and paranormal gets blurred quite a bit. And while there are still a few too many “wait, why don’t they just…” moments, there are at least fewer for them than in the original.

Which leaves the real question as, “How does this work as a sequel?” The answer is surprisingly great. Paranormal Activity 2 is kind of a wrapper picture and the story takes place in roughly the same time frame as the original (the sequence of events in the original takes place within the confines of this picture though they are only alluded to and not shown much) which works then as both a prequel and a sequel, providing a greater context to the whole thing. It’s a lot better, story-wise, than I really would have expected.

There are some things that hold PA2 back a bit: Ali’s character is never really given a resolution; Daniel, the husband, reacts pretty consistently throughout but his insistence on ignoring the fact that they have taped evidence of everything strains credibility; the ending feels so rushed as to be almost anticlimactic. The biggest fault in Paranormal Activity 2, though, is that it really depends on having seen the first for it to work. Technically the film gives you all the information you need, but lacking the part about Micah and Katie, a key component of the conclusion is simply missing, which is a shame because it wouldn’t have taken much to have included at the very least the last sequence from the first movie again. It’s all the more baffling when you note that they include the first sequence from the original, just to prove how they tie together. Which almost makes me want to give this movie two ratings: Two stars if you haven’t see Paranormal Activity and four stars if you have because as a companion to the first, it’s quite well done. As a stand alone film, though, I’ll have to split the difference and say maybe it will work for you, maybe it won’t. Take my advice though and watch the first one then this—or, better yet, watch this one up until it cuts to Katie and Micah, then pop in PA1 watch to the end and come back to view the finale, treating them both as one unbroken film. Which is, in fact, what they really are.

from No Thief Like a Bad Movie — December 18, 2011 at 09:04AM