Paranormal Activity 2

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 (Tod Williams, 2010)

Rather than picking up where PARANORMAL ACTIVITY left off, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 goes back to explain where the demon that tormented Katie and Micah came from and what it wants. This sequel/prequel observes Katie’s sister Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden) and her family, which includes husband Dan (Brian Boland), stepdaughter Ali, and their infant son Hunter.

One day the Reys come home to find that an intruder has wrecked their house, although the only thing that seems to be missing is a necklace Katie gave Kristi. Sufficiently spooked, they install multiple security cameras, but strange things happening around the house keep Kristi in particular on edge. Unexplainable noises awaken the baby. A pan is knocked from its secured storage spot. The pool cleaner mysteriously is removed from the pool overnight. Over time the disturbances become more aggressive.

Following the series’ conceit of presenting edited found footage, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 consists of house surveillance videos and some interactions caught by camcorder. Much of what’s captured on tape and hard drives is mundane, but it’s precisely the ordinariness and long takes in these scenes that can make them so unnerving when the supernatural element disrupts the tranquility. For instance, watching someone sit at a kitchen island isn’t inherently compelling, but the anticipation of something happening while patiently focusing on the scene pays off with a massive jolt when the cabinets and drawers explode open for no reason.

It’s in this manner that PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 consistently succeeds at constructing jump moments with deliberation during routine home settings. The scares in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 aren’t as frequent or always as well built as the original film’s, but those that exist are still pretty effective. In day-to-day life, unseen things that go bump in the night, or the daytime for that matter, have a way of frightening the living daylights out of us. The same applies to the movies.

Grade: B-

Paranormal Activity

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (Oren Peli, 2007)

Like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, the low budget chiller PARANORMAL ACTIVITY assembles raw footage found in the aftermath of an encounter with something beyond our understanding of the natural world. Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat play a couple who observe weird occurrences and sounds in their home and are becoming more spooked by them. In keeping with the intent of passing this off as real, the actor's first names share their first names with the characters.

Katie has experienced these disturbances since childhood and feels they are becoming more persistent. In the hope of finding an explanation, Micah purchases video equipment to record nearly everything that happens when they are awake and asleep. What the tapes reveal does not comfort them.

The makers of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY understand that the most frightening things are what we imagine but can't see. Whether it's the creaks and cracks of a home settling at the end of the day or the hiss of air that sounds like vague voices coming from the vents, things that go bump in the night can scare even the most rational person, especially one who's half-asleep.

Writer-director Oren Peli uses PARANORMAL ACTIVITY'S limitations of a single location and low budget to his supreme advantage. The camera never leaves the property on which the couple's home sits, so no relief is ever provided. The mental wear and tear of living in a stressful place and in an increasingly tense relationship is played beautifully by the actors and is thus transferred to the viewers.

Peli stokes audience suggestibility and encourages scanning the video noise for the tiniest sign of something supernatural at play. With agonizing anticipation of something bad happening, he teases for long stretches and then delivers fleeting but startling glimpses or sounds of something untoward going on.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY isn't an actor's film per se, but it wouldn't be as eerily effective without Featherston and Sloat's believable, lived in performances. Since we observe everything through their eyes, the film becomes scarier the more their relationship frays.

Grade: B+