Paranormal Activity 2 | Review

Horror or no horror, this ghost is getting really boring.

I really hope this is the last I see of the Paranormal Activity series, because at risk of ending up like Saw trash, this genre of found footage and a nocturnal, lazy ghost has gotten old in just two films. Now I saw this movie in the dark and alone just like I did with it's predecessor and I was dead fucking bored.

So what we have here is generally the prequel to Paranormal Activity. We follow a family who's mom is related to Katie from the first movie. So we do see Micah and Katie here and there. The family brings home their newborn son but finds their house has been ransacked without anything taken. The dad sets up security cameras all over the house and over the next few weeks, boring ass ghost shit happens.

The gimmick may have worked in the last film thanks to the hype and the fact that the film actually had some genuinely creepy moments, but Paranormal Activity 2 is just dull. Everything that happens in the fist film happens here in painfully predictable jump scare scenes. Person is in kitchen, living room, bedroom. Person is alone. Person is sitting. Kitchen, living room, bedroom is quiet. A chair moves. Que audience screaming.

There's just nothing to be surprised of let alone scared of in this sequel. And the fact that we already know what plays out in Paranormal Activity makes this movie absolutely useless. It offers nothing new in terms of scares, and only squeezes in a tiny bit of information to the lore of the first film. This movie is the Saw 3,4,5,6,7 of the Saw series. It's all about how much money this dead horse can ring in before an angry mob is organized outside Lionsgates.

But I will say this, the actors were much better than the first movie. Certainly less annoying. I bought these guys as a family, who acted like rational, average people. Watching them interact and deal with this whole paranormal theme was enjoyable, funny at times. But this also meant that we have to sit through long periods of this family doing average boring stuff before a chair moves in the background.

And this movie actually had a climax! And a pretty good one. The storyline of the film ends in a pretty freaky basement scene with a whole lot of elements from The Blair Witch Project being referenced. That climax was pretty tight. Too bad it got ruined by the shittiest piece of bull ending that had horrible special effects and just a flat out laughable train wreck by Katie Featherston.

I mean... this movie isn't bad or anything. It's not Vampire Sucks but there's really nothing to look forward to here. Bor-a-ring.

RATING: 4/10