Movie Review: <em>Paranormal Activity 2 </em>
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio
The neatest trick turned by this ingenious chiller is to render us wary by making normal activity hairy. And scary.
Paranormal Activity 2 involves paranormal activity too.
Paranormal Activity (2007) was a clever -- and legitimately frightening -- little psychological horror piece, a ghost story about a couple who move into a suburban home and are disturbed by what seems to be a nightly demonic presence.
The resourceful central conceit, which worked like gangbusters in the low-budget marvel, was that we were watching found footage from a night-vision video camera set up over a three-week stretch to see what happens while the couple sleeps, and perhaps discover just what kinds of things go bump in the night.
The result: tension and terror and shivers. Nearly as many as we get this trip.
This time we're in the home of a family of four in Carlsbad, Calif., bothered by unexplainable happenings, including a burglary during which nothing was taken. So we spend the rest of the movie watching the camcorder and surveillance-camera footage from a half-dozen locations from cameras that have been installed to record whatever is happening when everyone's asleep or away.
This followup film stands on its own and/or links with its predecessor so that it works its hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck magic on everyone. But one non-spoiler item for you to know going in: there is a close connection between the characters in the two films that actually makes this sequel a prequel.
Oren Peli, the writer and director of the first Paranormal Activity, is the producer of Paranormal Activity 2, which was written by Michael R. Perry, Christopher Landon, and Tom Pabst and directed by Tod Williams (The Door in the Floor, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole) as the second salvo in a probable franchise.
The paranoia that all new parents feel is smartly tapped into by the screenplay, and the film goes on to deliver a handful of shock scares that are each a rude jolt to the system.
As was its predecessor, this film is the antithesis of a gorefest. It earns its scares, and there are plenty of them, by breaking the eerie silence and stillness with sudden sounds and sights that catch us off guard -- even though we're on guard the whole time.
We find ourselves staring at, perusing, combing the frame intently -- the way we would not just during a movie but in our own homes during a noisy night -- not only scanning for a demon or a ghost, but looking for any change in the mundane routine that might indicate an otherworldly presence.
The ominous nature that ordinary household objects begin to take on is amazingly effective in thickening the suspense. The sense of fear and dread is beyond acute.
(Breathe, breathe!)
And forget CGI. This is a low-tech exercise in delivering the heebie-jeebies, terrifying us the old-fashioned way: by putting us in touch with all the things that make us, young and old, want to hide under the bed.
Before it concludes, Paranormal Activity 2 eventuates into a rather more conventional horror thriller, with a conclusion that suggests speed bumps rather than goosebumps, and that's perhaps more in the way of explanation than we want or need.
But by then we've opened enough scare packages to be less than annoyed. You may dislike or dismiss the climax or argue about it on the way home. But on the way to that ending, this fright flick will scare the burger right out of your bun.
So we'll haunt 3 stars out of 4 for the spookily minimalist but maximally spooky Paranormal Activity 2. See it on Halloween. With someone you trust.