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"Paranormal Activity 2" manages to succeed where most horror sequels usually fail — creating suspense and shocks while maintaining respect for the original.
The original was writer-director Oren Peli's 2009 micro-budgeted thriller that purported to use found video footage of a San Diego couple being terrorized by a mysterious demon. With no-name actors and an initial budget of only $11,000, along with a tweaked ending (suggested by Steven Spielberg), "Paranormal Activity" made a whopping $107 million at the box office. An amount, of course, that made this sequel inevitable.
The sequel, directed by Tod Williams (whose last film was the John Irving adaptation "The Door in the Floor"), takes the found-footage idea of the first movie and expands on it. Not long after Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and Daniel (Brian Boland) come home with their new baby boy, Hunter, they find that the house has been ransacked but no valuables have been taken. They have six security cameras installed around the house, in hopes of catching any more intruders. There's also a video camera, owned by Ali (Molly Ephraim), Daniel's daughter from a previous marriage.
Soon we learn two important details. One is that Kristi's sister is Katie (Katie Featherston), one-half of the couple from the first movie. The other is that everything we see is happening two months before what happened in the first movie (so we also see the first film's other main actor, Micah Stoat).
As with the first movie, things build up slowly. One night it's nothing more than the light in the swimming pool going out. Another time, a pot falls off a rack in the kitchen. But when the incidents escalate, they produce "gotcha!" shocks that will make you jump out of your seat.
The home-security conceit allows for more camera angles of the action, more fluid pacing and less of the nausea-inducing herky-jerky movement of the first film (though there is some handheld work, particularly in a "what the hell is going on?" sequence near the end). It's a good deal more polished than the original, and contains some well-planted bits of backstory. But it's not quite as viscerally engaging as the first film.
The scariest moments of "Paranormal Activity 2" employ little Hunter and the family dog, thus tapping into our most primal fears of evil forces threatening the innocent. Those scares are interesting enough to make you forgive the repetitive shots of the couple's front steps and swimming pool.
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Paranormal Activity 2
Another house is plagued with a mysterious haunting, in a sequel that captures much of the spirit of the original.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Now open.
Rating • R for some language and brief violent material.
Running time • 91 minutes.