Grade: “C”
A nice-looking suburban family, a daughter who is obsessed with her video camera, a few security cameras scattered around the house, a demonic entity trying to kidnap an infant — throw a dog in there and we have ourselves a scary sequel.
Paranormal Activity 2 is one of those rare cases in which the sequel is better than its predecessor, but that’s still not saying much. This movie is a prequel, and for those of you who haven’t seen Paranormal Activity, I suggest you do so or you may find yourself a little confused with the storyline.
This prequel takes place sixty days before the first movie. We follow the story of Katie’s sister Kristie and her family. This time the demon is after Kristie’s newborn son, Hunter.
We once again are made to believe that the footage being shown is real. The first half of the movie mounts little to no action at all. Unless, of course, you consider a pool light mysteriously turning off in the middle of the night to be scary. For the first thirty minutes of the film, the family is trying to discover why the pool cleaner is suddenly out of the pool every morning. The scary thing is how clean that pool really is.
As paranormal events start to escalate, it’s a mystery as to why no one in the house decides to check the security tapes every morning. Most of the crazy things that take place may have been avoidable had anyone in the house had a little common sense. Although, I guess it wouldn’t really be a movie then, would it?
The realism of a documentary loses its luster as the film progresses. It’s rather unrealistic to have a steady cam on during some situations in this movie and the feeling of watching something that’s real quickly goes away with cheesy dialogue and over-the-top acting. That said, the acting is much better than the first movie, as there is a lot less dialogue and more action. However, the view from the security camera becomes annoying after a while, as the audience is constantly seeing the events happen from a distance.
The amount of action in this sequel really goes beyond that of the original and is what gives this movie a grade bump. Most of the activity is the same as the first movie, just prolonged and escalated to a new intensity. One of the coolest effects, and one that will surely make you jump, is when all the cabinets in the kitchen spring open and spew their contents all over the room.
This is definitely a good date movie. The number of times the movie will make you jump is limited, but the last ten minuets of the movie are sure to get your heart racing. It just sucks that you have to sit through a whole hour before you get to it.
[Senior Mark Gibson is a film and video media communication major.]
