Paranormal Activity 2 review

Well, this one is difficult to review. It seems that this film is either love it or hate it, with very little room in between. I, for one, enjoyed this film. I felt that the original was incredibly overrated. While I appreciate what Oren Peli did with a minimal budget, I feel that the hype was just that. The original had a decent premise and was well executed, but it fell flat, in my humble opinion.

The sequel, which is actually a prequel, is superior in my opinion. As the franchise is already established we get to jump in to the suspense relatively quickly. While keeping this review relatively spoiler free, I will say that this film does answer a lot of questions left by its predecessor.

The "acting" all around was pretty good, the effects all seemed pretty realistic and pacing was relatively tight. My one complaint is that there are some flat out ridiculous decisions made by two main characters. The father in this film is borderline retarded.

After the demon terrorizes the house, the family assumes they were the victims of a break in and decide to install several cameras, then terror ensues. That's the basic premise. My problem is that even when strange goings on start to happen, the father only checks the cameras twice! If my family came to me with complaints of being terrorized I would at least check my DVR before dismissing their claims as nonsense. Also, there is a scene in which he opts to leave his wife and baby home alone at 2am even after the haunting has been verified.

My other complaint is the stereotypical Latina nanny who just so happens to be an expert in the paranormal. In addition, this film opts out of the "less is more" mentality of the first film which works for the most part. The weak aspect of this is the reveal of the entity, which looks rather cheesy. I've seen better creature effects in films with a much smaller budget.

The film was overall enjoyable, building a good amount of suspense by putting a newborn child directly in the demon's sights. The daughter in this film, Ali, was the stand out. While her acting was nothing spectacular, she at least exuded some common sense. Also, there is a nice cameo from Micah and Katie which really ties up some loose ends. I did feel that the end was a bit abrupt, however. This story reminded me of Stephen King in the sense that it was an eerie story but the ending was a bit botched.

Overall, a worthwhile watch and a worthy companion piece to the original. While it does tread familiar ground with some of the demons tricks it does make clever and original use of the amateur footage technique. A decent film worth the price of a rental. If you enjoy a good ghost story, you could do a hell of a lot worse.

Highlight Scene: Kristi (the mother and Katie's sister) runs to check on her baby and is brutally dragged out of his room, flung down the steps and locked in the cellar. The terror here seems real and the effects, which easily could have looked ridiculous, actually looked pretty damn realistic.