Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
The plan was to come home from the Wednesday midnight screening of the sequel to the most profitable film of all time, go to bed, get up slightly early Thursday morning, and write the review. Yet here I am at 2 a.m., just back from PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2, wired beyond words and, yes, more than a little freaked out. I'm going to attempt to write a spoiler-free review, but this is the kind of film where some people's definition of "Spoiler" might vary drastically. So if you don't want to know any major plot points, you may want to hold off reading this review. Warning given.
I saw the first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY on the first day of my first Fantastic Fest last year, with one of those great Austin crowds you always pray you'll see a good scary movie with and makes it real easy to love just about any movie. I didn't doubt that I was pulled in and scared nearly to death by the first film, but I was fully primed to get scared. With PA2, I was the only critic in a theater full of citizens, all of whom loved the first film as well. But Chicago crowds can be rough on horror films. For example, they might nervously laugh when they should be quiet. But I'm here to report that the crowd I saw this movie with was unbelievably quiet at all the right spots…except when they were gasping or screaming or saying things like "No, no, no, no..." Oh, wait, that last one was me. I think it's fair to say that director Tod Williams (taking over for the first film's Oren Peli) has studied PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, figured out what worked and what didn't as much, and added a few wonderful twists with the help of screenwriter and T.V. veteran Michael R. Perry.
As the film begins, we see a new family's home movies. A pretty mom, dad, teenage daughter, and an infant named Hunter. We soon find out that mom is actually stepmom, although everyone seems to get along great and is appropriately doting on baby Hunter. Forgive me for not knowing any of the actors' names. The only thing the studio has confirmed so far is that Katie Featherston from the first PARANORMAL ACTIVITY reprises her role in this film, which is true. Soon after we've established the home layout and family relationships of this new family, Katie shows up, and we immediately remember how, um, unwell she looked the last time we saw her. Turns out she's the sister of the woman of the house, who I think got a mention in the first film as being someone who was mutually tortured by unseen entities along with Katie when they were children. Has she arrived in her demonic state to cause more havoc? It doesn't seem so, but when the couple asks where her beloved Micah is, she brushes off the question with something along the order of "He didn't feel like being social today." Uh oh.
But then, guess what? The next time we see Katie in the home movies, Micah (Micah Sloat) is with her, and a title card tells us that the scene we're watching is 60 days before Micah is killed. For the first time, we realize that PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 is a prequel, and that at this point in time (still 2006, the same year that Katie and Micah were terrorized), none of the things we saw in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY have happened. After the new couples' home is vandalized (although weirdly nothing was stolen), they have video cameras installed around the house (if you've seen the trailer, you know the angles--pool, kitchen, dining room, entranceway, baby's room), and once again we have multiple static views to get used to while director Williams systematically ignites our nightmares with sound effects, doors opening and closing, a nervous and highly sensitive dog, and general mayhem created around a baby boy named Hunter.
The first few encounters with this unseen force are remarkably similar to events that occurred in the first PA, but there's something a bit more menacing going on in PA2, a lot of which has to do with the victims being a family unit and not just a couple of borderline obnoxious people that don't know when to stop. Admit it, more than a few of you were happy to see Micah die in the original film. But the family unit in the new film is functional, happy, and, above all, likable.
(Sidenote: I absolutely recognized the lead actress from some TV shows, and it's killing me that I can't remember from what. I'm sure many of you will clue me in and make me feel very dumb for not coming up with her name.)
There is something about putting a baby in a kind of vague danger that really upped the ante for me with PA2. In some films, putting an infant in harms way is cheap and awful; here, it's spooky as hell. And if it's even possible, I felt more of a sense of dread than I did during the first go-round, and anytime the baby started crying and someone ran from downstairs to check on him, I tensed up at the thought of what they might find waiting in or absent from that crib.
While the mom clearly remembers a time in her life when being scared was a daily occurrence (yes, the two sisters convene to discuss the weird events, with Katie offering up ironic "just ignore it" advice), it's her stepdaughter that does some investigative work and provides us with enough clues to figure out what's probably happening to this family and why. Dear old dad is a non-believer, so much so that he fires the housekeeper when he catches her burning incense to drive out "evil spirits" while holding the baby.
But PA2 works best in those overnight security camera moments, just like the original--Night #1, Night #12, Night #15. As soon as the world is seen from those familiar angles, my heart started racing and my eyes started scanning the scream for anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes, it's something simple like a falling frying pan or a moving door or a shadow cast from an unseen source. Other times, it's far worse. In most ways, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 exceeds the scares of the first film, and does so without resorting to easy special effects or growing the plot outside of the home. There were a few times when I questioned why a family member might pull out a video camera at a particular moment in the story, but every time I screamed, I kind of forgot to consider the question. The caliber of the acting is better in the new movie, and that means a great deal toward selling the fear.
Not to ruin anything (closest thing to a true SPOILER, coming up), but at one point in the story, the action shifts to a post-PARANORMAL ACTIVITY timeframe, and that is something you do not want to miss if you loved the first movie. And the way the two sets of events are linked is kind of great, as is the way that little details from Katie and Micah's story are birthed in this story (remember that burned photo of Katie as a little girl found in the attic in the first movie?). So there you have it. I was a big fan of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and I'm even more impressed with the new movie that borrows its style and pacing but ramps up the tension and scares considerably. See PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 with someone you love and doesn't mind having their arms bruised and torn up. And a big thanks to the beyond-respectful crowd in Chicago I shared this experience with. You guys were fucking awesome, and your screams were priceless.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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