PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2

Let me just say that it is totally, TOTALLY unfair to scare the crap out of a character while she is sitting in her kitchen enjoying a cuppa. They've crossed a line, I tell ya! (shaking fist)

The come-from-nowhere, no budget hit Paranormal Activity made such a butt-load of money you just knew there'd be scrambling to repeat the success. Paranormal Activity 2 sticks to the basic, no-frills filmmaking style that made the first movie so fresh, and yes, in my opinion scary. PA2 manages to pull off its own thrills and chills in the process, even if the premise is completely familiar this time around.

Set up as a sort of prequel to Paranormal Activity, we meet a young family in a generic, comfortably middle-class suburban house. Kristi and Dan bring home their new baby Hunter. Add in Dan's teenage daughter Ali, from a previous relationship, and their beloved Good Dog Abby, and you've got a happy blended modern family. They record the minutiae of their lives with handheld cameras, and all is cute and fine until the family comes home to a bizarre break-in, where the place is trashed, but nothing is missing except a family necklace. So they install security cameras in all the rooms. (You know you love it.)

The Paranormal Activity films remind me of those visual puzzles where you stare at two pictures that look exactly alike, but you have to find the oh-so-subtle differences. We see the same static shots of the same rooms over and over, but you find yourself staring SO HARD at all aspects of the image that your eyeballs chap. The thrill is in the anticipation, and to its credit, PA2 sticks to the rule of showing you as little as possible. A strange shadow moves, a door opens, a dog barks at nothing. Heck, it works. Which is why when things DO happen, the audience screams in unison and someone in the theater yells, "Oh, HELL, no!" at the screen. Good times!

By repeating the same formula as the original film, Paranormal Activity 2 succeeds. Sure, at this point we've seen it before (different characters, same idea), and the ending this time around is a kind of clunky link to the original film, but its still a good time at the movies. The Paranormal Activity films are the anti-slasher horror movies. And as someone who really can't stomach that kind of "entertainment" anymore, but still likes a good scare, I can appreciate that!