Paranormal Activity 2

When I saw the 1st Paranormal Activity it had it’s moments. But it wasn’t until after I got home and laid alone in my apartment that the movie really did it‘s magic. It’s creep effectiveness had to do with the things that happen around one when they are at their most vulnerable. Asleep, unaware and unprotected.

Suffice to say, I had trouble sleeping the next couple nights much akin to the way you’d probably have a hard time getting drunk around people you call “friends” after you see the Polaroid pictures of the last time you passed out in their company and they all put their cocks around your wide open mouth while you slept helpless on the floor.

So I wasn’t surprised at my apprehension the sequel’s effect may have on me.

Verdict: Yawn.

The director or editor did a great job in making the scenes organic and establishing characters, yet the whole “getting to know your cast” seemed so naturally done that I felt like I was watching mundane home videos of an anonymous boring family I couldn’t care less about.

With this new version there was also the use of simultaneous multiple camera views which at times bestowed upon me the unwanted role of feeling like I was a low paid security guard on watch detail during the graveyard shift in a gated community complex. When I left the theater I was looking for a time clock to punch my hours into.

The time it took to start the “paranormal activity” from a minor nuisance into a malevolent intruder was wearing. The intense moments either relied on something already done in the first movie (the female protagonist getting dragged around by an invisible specter or going into a “trance”). Or burrowed some M. Night tricks ( the cupboard scene from 6th sense or the baby walkie talkie scene from Signs).

Maybe the walkie talkie was picking up Alien transmissions that were stating this installment of the franchise was way disappointing even in a galaxy light years away.

Whatever the case may be, it was a bore but still left room for a 3rd chapter.

The writers were inventive in tying this episode in with its predecessor making it a sequel, prequel and real time parallel synched up with the first original victims that made you say “Ah ha!“ As well as “So what?”

The real test came later that night. I thought about the flick to see if it’d freak me out, I was asleep in seconds.

SO last night I watched the original, hoping to relive that nostalgic tension of yesteryear. I also had the 7 yr. old watch it with me in the hopes of at least being scared by proxy since it was a viewing with an unfamiliar viewer.

All that came to fruition from that excursion is a kid that now refuses to sleep while I’m trying to.

Bummer, just like the sequel