Paranormal Activity 2 Review

• 25th Oct 2010

Katie and Micah are back! Alive and demon-free, at least for the moment. The focus of the story is now Katie’s sister Kristi and her family – doting husband Daniel, teenaged step-daughter Ali and toddler Hunter. When strange happenings occur in their luxury house, Kristi starts to suspect that they may be linked to events that happened to the sisters when they were children.

As you’ve probably guessed from the reappearance of Katie and Micah, Paranormal Activity 2 folds around the first film, being both a prequel and a sequel. It does mean that you really need to have seen the first one to really appreciate it – although most of it works as a standalone film, newbies will be hard pushed to fully engage with the story if they don’t know what happened to the couple.

Following a suspected “home invasion” (as the Americans like to call it), the family install security cameras throughout the house, so here we get multiple cameras in multiple rooms, rather than the claustrophobic feel of one camera in one room at night, as in the previous film. The handheld camera (this time with night vision) still features heavily, as Ali attempts to document their haunted house, but much of the action happens on the static security cameras. Like the first film, there are protracted periods of time where nothing actually happens; you find yourself scanning every corner of the CCTV footage to see if you’re missing something. But fear not – a deep rumbling noise, in lieu of crescendoing music and therefore in keeping with the home movie/security camera aesthetic, precedes the supernatural events meaning you tense up, knowing that a scare is on the cards. This time it feels like there’s more at stake – not just a loving couple, but an entire family (plus a maid and a dog!) are at risk. The film is also quite funny – the automatic pool cleaner is almost a character in its own right.

The family are all pretty likeable though perhaps a bit too perfect, no dysfunction here as teenaged daughter and stepmother get on well. The husband and father is both dependable and sceptical, dismissing his wife and daughter’s propensity for the supernatural and therefore keeping the film grounded. When he finally realises that something is going on his sense of panic and despair are palpable. Ali, the teenager, manages to stay just the right side of annoying adolescent and Hunter, the baby, is adorable.

At times it wanders perilously close to close to cliché (for example, two teenagers babysitting and getting the ouija board out) but it never quite goes that far. There are almost no moments where you think “don’t split up to search for your friend!” or “don’t go into the dark forest in your nightgown!” The characters behave in the way you expect them to and often the most scary moments (including the film’s stand out scene) happen in the sunny day time, removing the sense of safety you got during the day in Paranormal Activity 1. There is one point, when Ali is on the phone to her friend and offers some clumsy explanation as to what may be going on, where I thought “uh oh, horror film cliché alert,” but I’m glad to say they swerved it adeptly leaving the origins of our demon only hinted at. This is no Blair Witch 2.

Although the set-up is the same as its low budget predecessor and a lot of the scares come from the same source (slamming doors, shadows on furniture, people being dragged about by their ankles) it’s a worthy follow-up and if the first half perhaps drags a bit, the second half will keep you fully engaged, as it cranks up the tension in every scene.

Like the first film, this one will stay with you. At the time, sitting in the cinema, you leap out of your seat, giggle nervously with your fellow audience members, then go for a drink with your mates and cheerfully discuss how silly you were for jumping out of your skin when that door slammed. But later, in the dead of night, when you wake up with your bladder aching, I dare you to get up and go to the loo without turning on every light in the house.

Emma Wilkin