Starring: Katie Featherston
Directed By: Tod Williams
Written By: Michael R. Perry, based on characters created by Oren Peli
Produced By: Jason Blum, Oren Peli
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rating: R
Running Time: Approximately 91 minutes
Website: paranormalmovie.com
Budget: $2,750,000
Genre: Horror
Release Date: October 22, 2010
Confession: I never saw the original Paranormal Activity. A horror movie presented as a faux-documentary and supposedly assembled from home video footage, it all smacked a bit much of the found-footage genre’s pioneer, The Blair Witch Project. Blair Witch was a sensation and has become something of a cultural touchstone. But while I admired the ingenuity behind it, the movie itself did nothing for me: shaky, hand-held camera work recording noises in the dark while the freaked-out actors cursed each other out, sound and swearing signifying nothing. Paranormal Activity seemed like more of the same.
Fittingly, Paranormal Activity 2 is a sequel that has something in common with the much-reviled Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows. The original PA director, Oren Peli, is gone (though he remains as a producer), absent in favor of a genre novice (The Door in the Floor’s Tod Williams). Blair Witch 2 had documentarian Joe Berlinger behind the camera, curiously hired to direct a movie that had found fame as a “documentary” as a standard, by-the-numbers horror movie. Having perhaps learned a lesson from that franchise-killing exercise, the makers of PA2 seem to approach their own sequel with the credo of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
This means another house tricked out with cameras and recording devices, and another family unwittingly stumbling into supernatural menace. To add to the illusion, an on-screen message thanks the Carlsbad, California police department and the families of the victims for allowing them to release the footage. It is, of course, a put-on: the movie’s cast is intentionally filled with unknowns and a couple of “Hey, wasn’t she in…?” faces to make it seem the more real. As of this writing, the filmmakers have even kept the actors’ names under wraps to preserve the conceit. Dan and his second wife, Kristi, move into a luxurious southern California home with his teenage daughter, Ali, and Ali’s new half-brother, Hunter. Dan’s home-movie obsession and a series of cameras installed after a mysterious break-in tell the story, initially in prosaic chunks – lounging by the pool, making breakfast, barbecuing – and incrementally in creepier and creepier ways. Ali is the first to catch on the unexplainable things that have been escalating around the house, and her digging begins to illuminate jut what is in the house and what it wants.
Divulging anything beyond that would be telling. The appeal of a movie like this is in the unknown, unexpected jumps and literal bumps in the night, so to go into any more detail would be pointless. TV writer/producer Michael R. Perry writes the script, and he works audience expectations with every trick in the book (there’s at least one very good “jump scare” midway through the film – in broad daylight, no less). The plot is virtually non-existent, anyway; your time will be spent scanning the screen for creepy details and anticipating a slammed door or creaky floorboard. Actress Katie Featherston, reprising her “Katie” character from the first film, does make an extended cameo appearance, and even those, like me, who haven’t seen the original movie will understand the definite, palpable link she provides to the first film. Featherston’s appearance and its implications are the closest PA2 comes to genuine narrative, but the actual plot is besides the point. Paranormal Activity 2 only wants the viewer to be concerned with – to borrow the tagline of an older, better horror movie – who will survive, and what will be left of them.
There are two camps of reactions to a film like this: there is nothing scary about a pan falling down in the middle of the night in a dark, quiet room, and there is nothing MORE scary than the ANTICIPATION of where that noise is going to come from. The former will find the first half, and most of the movie, for that matter, unbearably slow; the latter will relish the unease that unspools with maddeningly portioned dread. I plead the Blair Witch defense: I admire the craft and cleverness behind it, even if the movie made from it didn’t do much for me. See it with an appropriately receptive audience (jaded horror movie buffs need not apply) or in the late-night dark of your own living room and you may find the clattering of a pan to be scarier than any undead slasher.
Grade: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
