Paranormal Activity 2

When Paranormal Activity 3 opened to huge numbers last weekend, it reminded me that I hadn't yet seen Paranormal Activity 2. I got a blast from the first film, so Halloween weekend was the time to check out the first sequel.

With a much higher budget than the first film, and using some honest-to-goodness actors with professional credits, the film has also been directed by Todd Williams, who takes over from the creator, Oren Peli (who remains as a producer). The film takes the same format as its predecessor, though: home-installed video cameras document the presence of something supernatural haunting a family.

Watching the film had me scrambling to remember the first, because they are tied together. This one takes place just a few weeks before the first, and involves the sister of the woman in the first film, who appears her also (Katie Featherstone). I don't remember if the first film mentioned a sister, but it's always a challenge to make a sequel out of a movie that was presumably intended as a stand-alone.

Katie's sister (Sprague Graydon) has just brought home an infant son. Her husband (Brian Boland) has a teenage daughter from another marriage (Molly Ephraim). Early in the film they come home to a presumed break-in, with the house trashed but nothing much stolen. Boland has several video cameras installed, which allows the director much wider use of angles and a better look to the film.

As with the first film, things begin slowly. We get long shots of empty rooms, or characters doing there normal thing. At first we look at the screen like it was a "Where's Waldo?" book, waiting for something to move. I think the first inkling was when a mobile moves above the baby's crib on its own, but then doors move, pots fall from their hooks, the pool cleaner comes out of the pool by itself, and finally all the kitchen cabinets fly open at the same time.

It was at this point that I found the film to be just a repeat of the first, but then it got interesting, and the screenplay began to better tie the two films together and set up an arc to be explored in future films. As with the first film, Katie and her sister discuss something that happened when they were children. Ephraim, doing some research, comes to the conclusion that someone in Graydon's family made a bargain with a demon, and now that demon wants her first-born son (no son had been born in the family since the 1930s). The charred picture that the couple finds mysteriously in their attic in the first film was explained.

I find these films better suited toward home viewing, so I'll catch up with the third when it's on DVD, but I'm looking forward to it, as I'm now intrigued by the storyline.