Paranormal Activity 2

Just over a year ago, I reviewed the original Paranormal Activity; I thought it was a pretty cool flick, although definitely not for all horror tastes.  When I heard that they were making a sequel, I felt it was a little dubious.  What more was there to say about that story?  Wouldn't it be a little forced to get another group of people to film demon/spirit activity in their home?  If absolutely nothing else, the screenwriters did a good job creating a story that makes sense in the bigger picture and fits in nicely with the first film.

Paranormal Activity 2 is actually not entirely a sequel; it spends most of its running time as a prequel, and then provides more closure on the original film.  That's a novel approach, I'll admit.  This time around, the story follows the family of Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and Daniel Rey (Brian Boland), which includes Kristi's step-daughter, Ali (Molly Ephraim), and their baby boy, Hunter.

Bad news, kid.  Something is obviously going to happen to your parents.

Weird stuff had been happening in the Rey household for a while --- the pool cleaner would magically leave the pool every night, doors would open or close on their own, pots would fall from their kitchen hooks, etc. --- but one day they came home to a ransacked house.  Oddly enough, nothing of value was taken.  Being an obviously wealthy guy, Daniel pays to have security cameras set up in the house.  No further "break-ins" happen, but the weird shit continues.  At first, it is easy to ignore these titular acts, but they get harder to rationalize as time goes on and the actions get more violent.  By the time the family has bought into the idea of a demon spirit terrorizing their home, it's almost too late.  What do you do if a demon won't leave you alone?  There really doesn't appear to be a good answer to that.

Peeing in the pool is not a solution

So how does this tie into the first film?  Well, Kristi is the sister of Katie from the original movie.  Katie and her boyfriend, the obnoxious Micah, have a few scenes in this movie, including a stretch where the first couple of minutes from Paranormal Activity are actually spliced into Paranormal Activity 2.  Basically, this story shows how the demon wound up terrorizing Katie and Micah and what happened next.  That's a solid concept, right?  Well, I thought so.

I also liked the characters in Paranormal Activity 2 better than in the original.  Sure, Daniel is a bit of a jackass, but he's not constantly annoying like Micah.  I also liked the addition of a third character to the mix, even if Ali was far too pleasant around her parents to be believed.  The acting was pretty decent all around, but this type of movie doesn't spend much time with the acting, so neither will I.

A teenager that likes being filmed by her father?  Fiction!

With an interesting premise and pretty likable characters, it would seem that Paranormal Activity 2 would be as good or better than the first movie.  It is not.

For starters, this film operates with the understanding that it is just assembled from "found" footage, taken from security cameras and home videos.  In the first film, there was a reason for them to be videotaping everything; well, two reasons: Micah was an annoying jackass and he wanted to capture some X-Files moments on tape.  There is absolutely no reason the Rey family should record themselves this much.  None.  Even the most YouTube-ing tween doesn't record themselves answering the front door or doing internet research.  It just feels so unnatural for these people to be videotaping stressful, emotional conversations that it ruins my suspension of disbelief.  And what is wrong with this family?  When you're waiting for nothing to happen, they are spending their free time...reading?  Really?  In America?  An entire family?  I love to read, but...come on, let's be realistic and show that 60" flat screen being used more than once a month.

The other problem is with the film style.  Following up and tying into a movie that had a very distinctive look, it is no surprise that Paranormal Activity 2 mimics a lot of the visuals from Paranormal Activity.

You can tell it's the sequel because it has a crib

I'm fine with that.  What I can't stand is the way this film misuses this style.  The first film worked so well because it fast-forwarded through the boring parts and slowed down only when some creepy stuff was about to go down, which caught my attention and had me ready to be startled.  This film doesn't do that (except once, I think).  It might feel like nothing is happening on camera, and that is because it is not.  The first hour of this movie positively drags and there is only one decent-sized startling scare in that entire time.

I don't know what director Tod Williams was thinking.  The pace was so awful in this movie that I have a hard time admitting that the last twenty minutes are fairly cool.  Since the actors just have to act like normal folks and the film style is dictated by the format, Williams should have been able to focus on making this as tense as possible.  Instead, he opted to...well, I'm not exactly sure what he did instead.  All I know is that this is nowhere near as freaky as it should be.

This is about as much action as you'll get in PA2

It's all well and good to criticize a movie, but could I have done any better?  Absolutely.  There is a point where Daniel turns the proverbial corner and decides to believe in demons.  How do you protect your family from such a threat?  The solution that he comes with (SPOILER ALERT: passing the demon on to Kristi's unsuspecting sister, Katie, ensuring her death) is horrifying enough to warrant being the plot device for an entire film.  Here, it takes less than three minutes.  If they cut twenty minutes of nothing happening from the first two-thirds of the movie, this soul-wrenching, morally destitute decision would have had the time and space to breathe and draw the audience in.  Instead, we get an hour of doors opening slightly and twenty minutes of action that assumes that the audience saw the first film --- otherwise, the ending is pretty awful.  And if you saw the original ending of the first film (not the theatrical one), it is an impossible ending.  I was encouraged by a lot of things in this movie, but it buckled under the pressure to be the same (but different) from the more successful original.  It's not awful, but it was a boring disappointment for me.

One more note: I have to admit, using the phrase "Release the Kraken" as a sexual metaphor is awesome.  That is all.

Paranormal Activity

I don't usually catch horror movies in theaters.  This is partly because I go to the movies with my wife and she's a horror wuss, and partly because I'm not a huge fan of listening to teenagers explaining the movie to each other.  That is why, despite the ridiculous amount of success that Paranormal Activity had last year, I had not watched the movie until just recently.

The set-up is pretty basic.  Katie (Katie Featherston) lives with her boyfriend, Micah (Micah Sloat), in a pretty nice house.  Katie insists that she is being haunted by a ghost or something; she hears things in the night, finds items moved in the morning, and has even heard something whisper her name in the dark.  Micah is less convinced, but he's committed to being halfway supportive of his woman.  You gotta admire the man's half-assed support.  Katie consults with a psychic, who is pretty confident that Katie does not have a ghost problem.  She has a demon problem.  That sucks, right?  The psychic doesn't know how to help with demons, so he recommends they consult a demonologist friend of his ASAP and, in the meantime, don't piss off the demon.  Sounds pretty reasonable.  Micah is not buying any of that psychic mumbo jumbo, though, and convinces Katie to let him handle things himself.  Micah had already purchased a high-end video camera to record their days and a digital audio recorder to catch subtle noises in the night, and he throws himself into finding any signs of X-Files-type stuff.  Step one is mounting the camera on a tripod to record the night's happenings.  Step two is ***muble mumble mumble*** and step three is, of course, profit.  At first, it's pretty minor stuff, like some bumps in the night, or a door opening and closing itself by a few inches in the dead of night.  The more Micah finds, the more he wants to find, so he starts heckling the demon.  Remember what the psychic said about angering that thing?  Kids, don't do as Donnie Don't does.

The first thing you will notice about this movie is the hand-held camera work.  Don't worry, it's not like that the entire time.  In fact, most of the big action scenes happen at night, when the camera is mounted on a tripod while they sleep, so you don't have to worry about any Blair Witch-style motion sickness.  I'm not always a fan of movies that aim for a documentary feel to them, but writer/director Oren Peli makes good use of the style here.  I liked the camera's footage during the nighttime hours; when nothing was going on, the footage would go into fast forward, but when something was going to happen, time slowed back down.  Since a lot of the demon's work was quiet noises or small movements, I found myself leaning forward, paying special attention to those scenes.  Of course, that left me wide open for a jolt when the sound or whatever was loud and sudden.  The build-up for these scenes is pretty good, so these little scares don't feel cheap, as they often do in slasher movies ("Oh, it's just the cat" KNIFE IN THE FACE!).

There is one obstacle to enjoying this film.  That would be Micah.  Man, is his character annoying.  Micah the actor is fine, I guess, but the character is is a size 14 asshat, and that's pretty huge in hat sizes.  Has he never seen a horror movie before?  "Oh, I've got proof that something supernatural is going on around me.  I better taunt it and challenge it to fight me."  It's like this, kids, even if you don't believe that Jason Voorhies can rise from the grave and murder you, you still don't go to camp Crystal Lake to have premarital sex and take drugs.  Seriously, everything bad that happens in this movie is so obviously Micah's fault because it is all caused by him being douchey.  The fact that Katie lives with him makes her less likable, too, and (aside from dating Micah) she is one of the most reasonable female leads I have ever seen in a horror movie.

Look, if you try at all, you will be able to predict where the plot is heading.  This movie isn't going to scare everyone, and I totally understand anyone who tires of the film because Micah's an idiot.  I did jump when the movie wanted me to, though.  I watched the movie alone in the dark and then went straight to bed and, I'll admit it, I spent a few minutes being creeped out by the noises in my home.  Of course, then I realized that I was freaking myself out and got over it, because I'm a man.  It is what it is (at its core, a pretty standard haunting movie), but it's a very good example of what it is (I just told you what).  If haunting-type movies freak you out, then this movie should do the trick.  If you're more into gory movies or psychological thrillers, then you might want to take a pass.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of haunting movies, but I thought this was pretty solid.  If half of the characters weren't terminally stupid and annoying, then this might be a classic.  But man, that Micah is dumb.