At a quite little home with a southern California couple, strange things begin to happen. The woman of the house starts to become convinced that evil spirits are trying to get them; the husband, however is skeptical. We would never know any of this though, if it wasn’t for his obsession with recording the inside of his house on video, this leads to capturing all the otherworldly activity on video. For the movie goers, this means we get to see everything that happens directly from his camcorder.
Doesn’t sound familiar at all does it? “Paranormal Activity 2”, as a movie, is able to stay away from becoming an atrocity, and is actually very watchable, that said it doesn’t have too many new things to bring us, as it pretty much copies from the first film. Of course to many people this film will probably be considered better than the first and in terms of “scare” factor it ranks higher than its predecessor.
Unlike what most believe, Paranormal Activity 2 is more of a prequel or counterpart to the first rather than a sequel. The events of the movie occur before and even along with those of the first Paranormal Activity film. This time, the horror is centered on the family of Katie’s (first films main character) sister. The family includes the irritated husband, the teen daughter, a baby, and a dog as well as the wife. Early on in the film the house is vandalized; giving the husband a reason to install a heavy camera security system around the house, this is the footage which us movie goers are able to watch, this is also one of the only original aspects of the film as we get more “view” than just of the bedroom, in this film the whole house becomes available for us to see which makes Paranormal Activity 2 just that more interesting and fun to watch.
One of the biggest scare factors (for me) is the “baby in danger” theme the director threw into the film. Hunter is adorable, but the apparition/evil spirit still wants him. Watching baby Hunter and the German shepherd helpless in the dark on the movie’s security camcorder probably ranks as one of the most gut-wrenching parts of Paranormal Activity 2. The Evil Entity that wants Hunter doesn’t seem to care at all he is just a baby and continues to harass him just as much as his terrified parents.
The acting in the film are all personal, tangible and emotionally unsettling, like they should be for a horror/chiller film. Grayden stands out the most in the film, as this ranks as her best work to date. Watching the two films most would probably agree that Paranormal Activity 2 ranks even scarier than the first, mostly because Peli and Williams bring us an environment where this time the evil doesn’t have any limits or bounds and there is just something so nerve-racking about creating a hostile environment in the place where you should feel the safest.
This isn’t just another movie, this is true horror change in the realms of horror movie making. To reveal anymore would be evil, if you are a horror movie fan, or just someone who wants to see an entertaining film then look no further than Paranormal Activity 2, because unlike most sequels this film ends up ranking better than its predecessor.
