Does anybody remember the plot or the cast of characters from the first Paranormal Activity movie last year? It’s not necessary to really appreciate the now-released sequel, a film that follows much the same premise and plot with strangely enhanced responses. I didn’t care much for the original because of how much it was hyped and the predictable story. This time, I suspended my disbelief as much as possible and that effectively kept me on the edge of my seat for most of the show.
It starts with Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and Dan (Brian Boland) bringing their newborn son Hunter home near where her sister Katie (Katie Featherston) used to live. Katie, for the uninitiated, was the woman from the first movie who had to deal with her own haunted house. When Hunter gets to be several months old, strange things start to happen in Kristi’s house. First, there’s an apparent break-in where everything in the house is trashed and the only thing that is taken is a necklace that Katie gave to Kristi. After this incident, they install video cameras throughout the house.
And that’s where I decided to suspend all my disbelief. I know that it was necessary for the filmmakers to make this a relevant point of the story in order for us to watch seemingly authentic video footage of the ‘spirit’ doing things inside the kitchen or Hunter’s bedroom but it is extremely difficult to comprehend someone doing this in real life. I suppose that the family is obsessed with video, though, since Dan raves about his big TV and teenage daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim) can’t go anywhere without her camcorder, recording the seemingly endless array of brilliant moments that go on in this house.
Life goes from this major violation to a series of minute but progressively escalating disturbances ranging from bumps on the wall to hanging objects moving by themselves. They watch footage of the pool-cleaning vacuum somehow lifting itself out to come to rest on the ground, and Dan brushes it off. It’s the sort of movie that demands your attention as random scenes flip past your eyes and you’re never sure if a door is going to open or if a light is going to turn off or where the next startling moment will happen, if at all. The entity that lays therein sure takes its sweet time to make a stand and come out with what it wants.
This is my kind of horror movie, but it’s still far from perfect. If you know anything about tying strings to doors or how filmmakers can trick the audience’s eye by making an actor invisible then it’s so much tougher to buy into the whole story. Also, these characters behave in many ways that just don’t make sense. Dan, upon watching video footage of a door closing violently, proclaims, “Yeah, it was the wind.” Dan, really? In this story with few if any interesting or empathetic characters, it’s surprising that the viewer can still care when bad things happen to them. Paranormal Activity 2 is just as cheaply made as the first one and I will be the last one to be surprised if another sequel is already in the works. Considering that the first movie provided one of the highest returns on investment ever in cinema, I’d bet that we get to Paranormal Activity 4 before theatregoers start to question the point of it all.
