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.

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