Film Review: Paranormal Activity 2

In all honesty, I really didn't like the original Paranormal Activity. I suppose that may be because in the three years since its original unveiling, people had talked about how it was one of the best modern horror films. I didn't feel it to be much of a slow burn, as I almost fell asleep during it. Suffice it to say, I was not feverishly anticipating the sequel. Fortunately, I found the sequel to be what the first one just wasn't. Paranormal Activity 2 may seem like a sequel at first glance, but it's actually a prequel, and a successful one at that. Most prequels don't make you fear for the characters lives like this one does.

It follows married couple Kristi and Dan, their newborn son Hunter, and Dan's daughter Ali, as they suddenly begin to experience, you guessed it, paranormal activity. I was really expecting this film to be just a random family that has nothing to do with the first film, but believe it or not, the film have a legitimate mythology. It's not the kind that you get sick of because you can't put it together so easily, such as the Saw franchise. Both films are able to exist peacefully on their own, but they are more beneficial paired together. Although if you had to choose, go with the sequel.

I do have more than a few quarrels with this movie that keep it from being great, and level it at being simply good. For one thing, it takes forever for the film to find proper footing. For the first 50 minutes, things are rather ordinary. A threat is building, but it's building silently in the evil closet of mysteries. So yes, there is an evil closet of mysteries, and inside it is inscribed the single word(?) "melk". I'm not going to lie though; we get some nice character work in that first section, and this film made me care about the characters in a way that I just didn't in the original. They just felt like an actual family, and I was actually worrying about which of them, if any, was going to make it to the end.

Still, 40 minutes in, I really felt like this film was going to be a disappointing horror film. However, like in the last film, things get real when they break out the Ouija board. The final 40 minutes of this film is a non-stop thrill ride that the first film lacked. I was actually freaked out by some of the events that happened in the climax, as was the audience. The actual ending sequence does feel too abrupt, and doesn't work as well as anything else we'd seen before. The P.A. crew still needs to work on their endings, but it was still a necessary one. Ultimately, I found this film to be a satisfying horror film, even if it takes a while to get there.

B