When I showed up to the first Paranormal Activity I was ready to hate it and my friends and I prepared to mock. And mock we did. For a lot of the beginning we made fairly merciless fun of it until somewhere along the line the jokes started to slow and we found ourselves captivated and ultimately engaged. I loved the subtle slow burn up to serious shit going on and the general restraint that was shown getting to the final moments. The more I thought about it afterward, the more I liked it. So of course because the first one was a massive success a sequel was rushed out and it seemed like it was going to do everything wrong that the first thing did right. I went in with one of the same friends as the first one and we were prepared for it to suck and were ready with jokes. And then same thing happened.

For those of you who don’t know what is up with these movies, they are both ‘found footage’ style films revolving around paranormal activity caught on cameras. In the first one a young couple starts to video tape their room when they are sleeping as strange things have been happening. In the second one, we are following a couple with a teenage daughter, a German Shepard and a new baby. They come home one day to find their house tossed like the cops were looking for a murder weapon and they couldn’t find any good reason why it happened as nothing was taken nor can they find any good explanation for how it happened. In response to this violation of their space, they have security cameras installed. The entire movie then plays out on these cameras and on a hand held video camera.

Paranormal Activity 2 ties in with the first movie but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t say how. What I will say is that I would have preferred if the movie had been something completely separate but they way it tied in was very well done. This movie can stand on its own but it also strengthens the original film and both feel a bit deeper and more complete this way. When it first started I felt like it was being kind of shoehorned in to the original framework a bit but the place the movie ends up makes the whole thing flow.

I was really afraid with the multiple camera set up they were going to amp up the activity all kinds and give up the slow burn of the first film in favor of more gotcha scares and over the top special effects. Thankfully, this was not the case. The activity was a little more extreme as far as the scale is concerned but it was kept within the confines of what was generally plausible in the first film. Sure some of the gags from the first film are taken and tuned up a bit more but it worked well within the context of the film and never really feels cheap or like a cheat.

I am really impressed with how much this film felt like the first one with a different director and creative team and how well it pulled off the same balancing act that the first one did so well. Like the first film, Paranormal Activity 2 gives you a fairly mundane family doing mundane things and doles out the weird moments slowly and subtly. It starts a bit earlier in the film and some of the moments are telegraphed a bit where you can tell what weird thing is going to happen when but even in those cases the moments remain effective because it is all set up for more intense scares later in the film. They are also occasionally effective even when you know they are coming. My friend jumped so high at one such scare that I think he came close to hitting his head on the theater ceiling.

The suspense here is well drawn and is just right. It never feels over or under done and the scares generally don’t feel cheap or too ‘gotcha’ like. The movie does what it needs to earn these moments and as such they feel satisfying.

Prior to seeing the movie, I had concern that the addition of the dog and the baby would lead to exploitative moments where audience sympathies played with by violence to one or both of them. While obviously both are involved in the activity and both are at various points ‘victims’ of the activity, it wasn’t done in a way that felt like they were just doing it for the cheap shock. If the terrorizing of a baby and a dog can be done tastefully, they have done it here.

I liked Paranormal Activity 2 a lot but I can’t say that I liked it as much as the first. It is very close but given that this is so similar to the first film a lot of the gags were a little less effective because we’ve seen this sort of thing already. Further, some of the conclusions arrived upon by some characters feels a bit forced and is almost eye roll worthy and the characters were slightly less engaging than those found in the first film. There is almost too much support here. Where the first film felt more claustrophobic and helpless with just two people, here it felt a little more secure if only because there were more characters to rely upon. These complaints are really just quibbles and they don’t do much to take away the effectiveness of the film over all.

Conclusion [8.5 out of 10]

Paranormal Activity 2 was quite a surprise to me. Just like the first one, the more I think about it the more I like it and it did a great job with the build up and pay off. There were a few issues here and there and it didn’t feel as fresh as the first one but it is definitely worth checking out. I recommend seeing it with an audience as well as it really enriches the experience.  A guy in the front of the theater shouting ‘That was straight gangster yo!’ in response to a surprising scene made the whole thing that much more awesome. I am sure the film will play fine at home but these movies are a lot more fun in a crowded theater.