Movie Review – Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

The spectacular success of 2009′s hit scary movie, Paranormal Activity, could mean only one thing.

It’s time for a sequel.

Paranormal Activity 2 continues the story that was established with a demon haunting Katie and Micah from the first Paranormal Activity film.

As we see, about 95% of the events in PA2 actually take place a few months prior to the haunting and possession and then Micah’s murder in Paranormal Activity.  We learn more about the history of Katie and Kristi, and perhaps there’s much more to the hauntings than we previously believed.

Directed by Tod Williams, Paranormal Activity 2 continues with the “found footage” style of filmmaking used in this first film.  In addition to a hand-held video camera, the footage in PA2 also includes the footage recorded from the home’s video surveillance system.  Paranormal Activity 2 stars Sprague Grayden as Kristi Rey, Brian Boland as her husband, Dan Rey, and Molly Ephraim plays the role of Dan’s teenage daughter Ali.  Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat reprise their roles as Katie and Micah from the first film.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Paranormal Activity 2 begins in August of 2006 with the birth of Hunter Rey to the proud parents of Dan Rey (Brian Boland) and his wife, Kristi (Sprague Grayden).  Dan records footage of his new son along with his family moving into their new home in Carlsbad, California.  It’s a joyous event and the family, including Dan’s teenage daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim), seem pleased with the new home, especially the pool and hot tub.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

One day while the family is out, they return home to discover that somebody broke into their new home.  The house was ransacked but, oddly enough, nothing of value was stolen.  On top of that, Hunter’s room was not touched by the vandals.  Dan wants to catch the criminals in the act if they return, so he has a company install a series of video cameras throughout the main floor of the house.

Things seem fairly quiet at first despite the occasional odd disturbance.  For example, items left in the pool overnight would mysteriously end up on the patio by the next morning.  Another day Hunter’s high chair in the kitchen falls over after Kristi picks up the infant.  The family’s housekeeper, Martine (Vivis Cortez), tells Ali that she has noticed the presence of evil spirits in the house, though at this point Martine doesn’t seem to be too concerned about it.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Later, Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat) visit the Rey family.  The visit is mainly fun and games, but Kristi does express some concern to Katie about the strange burglars that struck recently.  Later, Kristi hears something in Hunter’s room, but when she investigates the room seems quiet . . . except for a mobile that slowly spins over Hunter’s crib.

Some time later Kristi is going through a photo album with Martine, and she discovers an old photograph of Katie when she was still a child.  It’s the same photograph that Katie later discovers in her attic in Paranormal Activity.  Like in the first film, Kristi thought that this photo was burned with everything else in a fire that occurred years ago.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

On the fifth night of disturbances, Martine is watching Hunter when she hears strange noises in the house.  She walks around but cannot find the source.  When the housekeeper is downstairs, she hears a loud crashing sound that startles the dog and makes Hunter start crying in fear.  Martine runs upstairs, gets Hunter, and then starts cleansing the home’s “evil spirits” with sage.  Dan and Kristi return home, and Dan’s upset with Martine burning sage around his infant son.  He makes her stop cleansing the house and then fires her the next morning, forcing Martine to move out of their home.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

A couple of nights later, Kristi is awake late at night and checking on Hunter.  She hears a sound outside of the upstairs window, but when checking she doesn’t see anything.  While she’s looking out the window we see the bedroom door slowly open.  She sets the boy in the crib and goes back to the window, curious as to what she might have heard.  As she’s looking outside, something crashes into the window and startles Kristi.  The next morning it’s revealed that a bird crashed into Hunter’s window and killed itself.

More mysterious events continue to happen and Kristi believes that their house has a ghost, something that Ali thinks is pretty neat.  Dan doesn’t believe in ghosts and doesn’t want anything to deal with it.  Katie and Micah return to visit the Reys, and while having fun in a pool, Katie reveals that she and Kristi had some occurrences with demons and the occult when they were little girls.

Another night something mysteriously catches fire on the stove.  Dan races downstairs as the smoke alarms sound, and he throws the burning item into the pool.  Ali and her boyfriend, Brad, are in the hot tub when the incident occurs.  Dan tries to blame Ali for being careless and leaving stuff on the stove, but Ali swears that she’s innocent.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

The next morning Dan agrees to review the footage from the security cameras to look for signs of ghosts or demons.  He finds footage of the pool cleaner as the machine mysteriously leaves the pool.  Ali is freaked out, but Dan thinks otherwise.  He later surprises Kristi and Ali and shows how this could occur on its own, though his method isn’t the same as what we saw on the video footage.

The next night, Dan and Kristi head for a night out and they leave Ali in charge of watching Hunter.  Brad arrives just after Ali’s parents leave, and the two teenagers drink and play with a Ouija board.  Their experience trying to contact the spirits in the house is inconclusive, and a little while later Brad leaves.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Ali is asleep on the couch and we watch as a dark shadow emerges from the basement and covers her body.  The television’s reception changes to static as the shadow creeps over the couch.  Ali is startled awake and the shadow suddenly disappears.  She heads upstairs to check on Hunter when there’s a knock on the front door.  Nobody answers when she challenges the knock, so what does the girl do but open the door to see if anybody is outside.  Ali steps onto the front porch when the door slams shut, locking her outside the house.

As Ali is trapped outside, we see footage from the nursery as Hunter is pulled up the side of the crib by a mysterious force.  We then see the baby walk out of his nursery, go downstairs, and then open the basement door.  The baby later crawls back upstairs and then Dan and Kristi return home.  Dan is furious with Ali’s actions as Kristi checks on their son.  He’s okay and the teenager is in trouble for opening the front door and stepping outside.

The next day, Ali finds the security footage and she shows her dad how the front door suddenly slammed shut, but he doesn’t believe her story.  Dan still thinks that there was an open window and a gust of wind slammed the door closed.  Apparently nobody thinks of checking the footage of Hunter to make sure that he was okay while Ali was trapped outside.

Ali is still fascinated with the concept of spirits in her house, so she begins to research the material.  She learns about demons and that supposedly it’s possible to make deals with demons for things like wealth and power, all in exchange for a first-born son.  She looks into her family tree and realizes that Hunter is the first male son in Katie and Kristi’s family for many years.

Katie visits and Kristi, and Kristi explains her concerns to her sister about the house possibly having a ghost or demon, but Katie doesn’t want to talk about their past.  We learn a little more about their past and that their mother apparently went insane from the dark problems that happened to Katie and Kristi a long time ago.  Katie advises her sister to ignore whatever evil presence may be in the house as the more that she pays attention to it, then the worse it will become.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Kristi is sitting alone in the kitchen when all the cabinet doors suddenly pop open, nearly scaring the woman to death.  She runs out of the kitchen and then returns when the water in a kettle starts boiling.  Kristi composes herself and closes all the cabinet doors, trying to convince herself that there’s nothing to be afraid of in the house.

Ali tries to talk to her step-mom about the events in the house, but Kristi is afraid to speak out loud and mention the subject.  She’s terrified of whatever happened in the past returning to harm her and her family.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

The violence escalates that night when the basement door quietly opens and the family’s German shepherd, Abby, runs downstairs to investigate.  She gets into a barking frenzy with an unknown entity and then suddenly stops.  It’s apparent that whatever it was that had the dog’s attention had attacked her.  Dan and Ali head downstairs and find Abby unconscious.  They take her to an animal hospital while Kristi stays behind with baby Hunter.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

An hour passes and Dan and Ali are still out of the house.  Kristi checks on Hunter when she’s suddenly attacked by a demon.  The creature pulls the woman out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and down into the basement.  An hour later we see a possessed version of Kristi calmly walk out of the basement and head upstairs.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Dan has to leave the house the next day and Ali is home alone with Kristi and Hunter.  The girl is scared as her mom is behaving strangely and not leaving her bed.  Ali stays downstairs and hears a faint scratching sound on the basement door.  She opens the door and discovers a bunch of fresh scratch marks including the word “meus” (Latin for “mine”).  She goes upstairs to check on Hunter when she sees Kristi lying in Hunter’s room.  There’s a large bite wound on the woman’s leg.  Ali hears a sound down the hallway, and when she returns to Hunter’s room, Kristi is gone.  The girl checks on her baby brother when her step-mom suddenly appears in the hallway door

We don’t see it, but Kristi forces Ali out of Hunter’s room.  When Ali returns and tries to comfort the crying child, Kristi forces the girl out of the room again.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Dan finally comes home and Ali shows him the video footage of Kristi being attacked by the demon.  He can’t refuse the demonic evidence now.  Dan calls Martine and begs her to come to the house to help them rid the place of the evil spirits.  Martine does so and prepares a cross to be used to exorcise the demon from Kristi’s body.  According to Martine, the demon inside of Kristi has to be passed to a blood relative —- to Katie.  Dan is willing to do so to save his wife and son from the demon.

Kristi is lying in bed when Dan approaches with the special cross.  Just as he’s about to exorcise the demon, Kristi attacks him and power goes out in the house.  Dan uses the video camera’s night vision mode and discovers that both Kristi and Hunter are missing.  He and Ali track them to the basement.  He keeps Ali at the top of the stairs while he descends and searches for his son and possessed wife amidst the boxes and other junk.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Dan sets down the camera once he finds Hunter.  He picks up the boy in the pitch black room when he hears a sound.  He sets down the boy and uses the camera’s night vision to search for his wife.  Dan slowly turns around when the possessed Kristi suddenly lunges at him.  There’s a brief struggle and Dan is able to touch Kristi with the special cross, exorcising the demon from her body.  He then carries her unconscious body to bed and then burns the old photo of Katie, the same photo that Micah later discovers in his house in Paranormal Activity.

Three weeks later, Katie is visiting with Kristi and telling her about strange occurrences that are happening around her house.  She asks Kristi if anything else is happening in her home, and she replies that the evil spirit is gone.  Supposedly everything is fine.

We then see Katie arrive at home and Micah greets her with his new video camera.  It’s the first minute or two of Paranormal Activity again.  We then see a message saying that Micah was killed on October 8, 2006.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

The next night, a bloody Katie suddenly appears inside of Dan and Kristi’s house.  Katie quickly snaps Dan’s neck, killing him.  She then heads upstairs and kills Kristi by throwing her body at the video camera in the upper corner of the room.  Katie then takes baby Hunter and disappears.

Paranormal Activity 2 ends with a message stating that Ali returned home a few days later from a school trip and discovered Dan and Kristi’s dead bodies.  Naturally, Katie and Hunter’s whereabouts are unknown.

So is Paranormal Activity 2 any good?

It’s hit and miss with this film.

While PA 2 adds much more to the overall story and sets the stage for more films (both prequels and sequels), we really don’t see anything new that wasn’t already established in the first film.

The special effects here rival those of the first film.  Don’t expect to actually see the demon this time around.  The closest you see of the actual menace is when a shadow creeps out of the basement and then covers Ali as she’s sleeping on the couch.  There aren’t even any spooky footprints of the demon like in the first film.

The vast majority of scare scenes occur at expected moments in the film.  You know that when the cameras are playing in “real time,” that something is about to suddenly fall, open, close, or just go boom in the house.  The two scariest moments are when all the cabinet doors in the kitchen suddenly pop open, and then in the end when the possessed Kristi lunges at Dan while in the basement.  But of course you’re expecting her to do that in the dark room, so it’s not really that scary.  It’s mainly loud and right there in your face.

PA 2′s strength comes to the back story that it adds to Kristi and Katie, although it really isn’t that much.  We learn a little more about the dark entity that the sisters encountered a long time ago and that it caused significant distress to their mother.  It’s also interesting that Dan is able to use the blessed cross to not only exorcise the demon from Kristi, but also send it to her sister Katie.  How this is able to happen isn’t exactly explained as Martine’s screen time is cut way too short during those last critical moments.

Otherwise, the rest of PA 2 is mostly a bore.  The conversations are just about everyday mundane subject matter, and the paranormal activity itself really doesn’t increase until the second half of the film.  It feels like PA 2 drops the ball by wasting too much time on nothing in general.  This film is nowhere nearly as good or original as the first Paranormal Activity film.

Is Paranormal Activity 2 a scary movie?  Not really.  If you’ve seen the first film you’ll know what to expect when the camera slows to “real time” mode.  It’s hard to classify this as a terrifying or even a horror film.  When it comes to scares, expecting the unexpected removes about 95% of the film’s “shocking” moments.

Is Paranormal Activity 2 worthy of your time?  It is if you enjoyed the first film and want to learn a little bit more of the haunting past of Katie and Kristi.  Just don’t expect to see a whole lot of new scares or thrills in this prequel/sequel.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – teaser trailer

Paranormal Activity 2 had the potential of being a fantastic sequel.  Unfortunately, this does NOT happen and the film feels like a cheap ripoff of the first installment.  It feels like the producers took a hot idea and quickly threw together a sequel/prequel that didn’t offer viewers a whole lot of new information or scares.

Ali Rey – “I don’t know if the house is haunted, but I hope it is.”