Paranormal Activity 2 Review: Turning Tension into Boredom

I was a very big fan and defender of the original Paranormal Activity. I thought that film was resourceful, interesting, and a refreshing entry into the contemporary horror field, as well as being scary as hell. When news of a sequel was announced, I was immediately worried. I was convinced that all the qualities that had endeared me to the original would be expelled from the sequel and I would be left with something that was a complete mess and utterly awful. Is Paranormal Activity 2 as bad as I had feared? Not entirely. But close.

The movie is actually less of a sequel and more of a prequel. The events take place about sixty days before the events of the original Paranormal Activity. The story follows Kristi, the sister of Katie – the protagonist/villain/victim of the first film – and her family as their new baby boy, Hunter, enters the family. After the baby is brought home and settles in, what appears to be a break-in occurs. The family finds their home completely destroyed but nothing missing. This particularly rattles Kristi’s husband, Daniel, and Ali, Daniel’s teenaged daughter from a previous marriage. Daniel decides to have surveillance cameras installed throughout the house as a security measure. And now with all the cameras in place, strange things begin to happen in the house.

Here’s the inherit problem with this film: it doesn’t really try and because of that feels very manufactured. At first, a character videotaping everything is explained by the newborn baby and wanting to capture everything he does. Then once the security cameras are installed there are those cameras to use, which are always running. But after that, it never makes sense why characters are holding cameras. The film simply stopped trying to explain it, even to the point of it becoming ridiculous that someone is holding a camera at a given moment. Whereas in the previous film, the character of Micah was recording everything as an investigation. That simple premise allowed him to constantly run the camera and record everything without the audience ever questioning it. Paranormal Activity 2 doesn’t ever create a convincing reason for the characters to constantly videotape themselves and thus never creates a believable reality.

My biggest complaint with the film by far is that the film doesn’t try to do anything new, it just tries to do more. Instead of two people in a big house, there are four people and a dog in a bigger house. Instead of one camera recording everything there are half a dozen. The film goes so far as to replicate moments, trying to make them bigger. In Paranormal Activity we watched Katie get pulled out of bed and dragged down the hallway. In Paranormal Activity 2, we watch Kristi get knocked over and dragged down a set of stairs, free herself, run up the stairs to the same room, get knocked over again, and dragged down the stairs again. In Paranormal Activity, there is a refrain shot of the couple sleeping in bed that creates dread, because every time that shot is shown, the audience knows it is going to get worse for them. In Paranormal Activity 2, there are a series of refrain shots: the front door exterior, then the pool exterior, then the kitchen, then the living room, then the front door interior, then the baby’s room. It’s just too much and yet not enough. This is supposed to create tension but is so drawn out that it starts to become boring. The film never creates a rhythm for the strange phenomena to occur. Instead, strange things can happen at any time, day or night. This means that there isn’t the building tension that culminates in a terrifying release, but a series of jump scares.

That said, there still are some genuinely frightening moments in this film. The best one being a scene in the kitchen involving cupboards. But these scares only exist in the moment at the theater. When I returned home to my empty apartment, I was able to change and fall asleep. I didn’t have to double-check the locks on the doors or leave the lights on. I didn’t check over my shoulder. Because this film never convinced me I had to do any of those things.

From a technical standpoint, Paranormal Activity 2 is a better made film than its predecessor. It is edited better and shot better. But it should be. The first film was made in a week for $15,000. This one was backed by Paramount from the start.

However, the limitations of the original forced filmmaker Oren Peli to come up with creative solutions that led to an interesting film. With those limitations removed, it is disappointing to see director Tod Williams offer nothing new and only retread everything that had been offered before. In doing so, he has proved that this franchise has already begun to overstay its welcome.