“When I heard talk of this movie comin’ out, I wasn’t exactly planning to head over the theater at my first opportunity. Really, I figured I’d end up skipping it entirely. But the buzz was good, and this week didnt have much in the way of new releases. And we all know how obsessive I am about going to the theater as often as possible, so it was the reasonable choice for a mid week flick.
Had a bit of drama, err not drama but a hiccup I guess, logisticwise. I’d Fandango-ed my ticket so I could use one of my cheap movie credits (I mentioned it before, but I joined this site where I pay 20 bucks a month and get 4 movie tickets. Wicked sweet. Hit me back if you want details so I can hook you up, and get myself a freebie for the referral)). That meant I had to print out my ticket. Between 5 printers that I could find in the office, none of them would \m/ print my \m/ ticket. Instead of being able to just run into the theater, grab a concession stand dinner, and sit down with enough time for a quick game of Tetris on my phone, I had to haul ass to get home and print my ticket there. Hoovered a tv dinner, since Im cheap and I was home anyways, ran like the wind back to the theater and sat down just as the lights went dim. Turns out, it actually was worth all the effort.
Just gonna get this outta the way now and say that yes, a lot of this write up will be making comparisons to the original. That’s the way that makes the most sense to me. Deal with it.
It did take me a lil bit to get into the film for a couple reasons: A)Ive been trained to be skeptical about sequels, so on some level Im always trying to find something wrong. 2)It seems it did take longer for things to pick up than it did with the original. III)Ive said this before, but its been a while so I’ll reiterate. I like to figure things out and solve the puzzle myself. For me, one sign of a good movie is me not being able to get it all sorted too quickly. In this case, I was trying to reconcile what I was seeing happen in this film with the original. I had a few preconceived notions as to how it all fit, which threw off my Sherlock Holmes-ing of the plot points.
Okay, so how did it fit together with its predecessor? Pretty damn well, I thought. Dare I even say impressively so? It was that rare sequel that not only stayed true to the spirit of the original, it actually enhanced the story and made more sense of it (Why couldnt The Matrix sequels have done that? Oh right, what Matrix sequels? There was only one film) When watching the original at BYOP on Saturday, a friend made a comment about how it was kinda disappointing that you never entirely found out the motive of the evil spirit. The sequel made it much more clear. And while it took a while to work up to the actual connection, that link ended up fitting perfectly. Ugh, its hard to explain all this cryptically so as to not give spoilers. It also cleared up my own confusion with the timeline in this film since I was trying to figure out how all the “”whens”” coincided with the other. While the ultimate ending was predictable, it was still very satisfying. Really, there was no other way it could have played out.
I think another reason why the paranormal activity in Paranormal Activity 2 was so slow to build up is that they were face with the typical sequel challenge of trying to be original without being ridiculous. So things were kept to a bit more of a minimum than I would have liked, but it was still effective.
I also like that they were able to find a way that made sense to work Katie and Micah into the film. That was another one of my concerns going in, when I saw that they were back for it. I really had been impressed with them last time, and this new cast was just as good. I even found myself really sympathizing with the teenybopper stepdaughter, when I usually despise teenage girls. They scare me. More than the creepy invisible demons.
Anyhoo, definitely a good companion piece to the original film. If you were a fan of the first, I highly recommend checking it out. I dont think it’d be worth watching without knowing the other since it wont be so impactful (is that a word?). So I guess I know what I’ll be screening at next year’s BYOP…
Paranormal Activity 2 – \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/