If nothing else, the makers of Paranormal Activity 2 deserve credit for avoiding the disaster of a movie like Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, which followed up on a massively popular, inventive underground horror movie by making a rushed, conventional mainstream sequel. Paranormal 2 takes great care to replicate the style of its predecessor, so much so that a lot of it feels redundant. It’s a slicker, bigger-budgeted version of the movie that everyone went to see last year, and in that sense it’s successful. But like a lot of horror sequels, it suffers from trying to continue a story that was never meant to be continued in the first place, and adds too many unnecessary complications in the process.

The Details

Paranormal Activity 2

Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherston.

Directed by Tod Williams

Rated R. Opens Friday.

Beyond the Weekly

Paranormal Activity 2

IMDb: Paranormal Activity 2

Rotten Tomatoes: Paranormal Activity 2

Director Tod Williams and screenwriters Michael R. Perry, Christopher Landon and Tom Pabst solve part of the problem by setting most of Paranormal 2 before the events of the first film, so that original actors Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat can show up as the happier, well-adjusted versions of their characters—Sloat only briefly, and Featherston in a fairly substantial supporting role. Here the main character is Katie’s sister, Kristi (Sprague Grayden), who finds her home haunted in much the same way as Katie’s was (or will be) in the first film: Strange loud noises, furniture moving around, doors closing or opening unexpectedly. The movie starts slowly, just as before, as we get to know Kristi; her husband, Daniel (Brian Boland); her teenage stepdaughter, Ali (Molly Ephraim); and her toddler son, Hunter. Williams uses the same first-person-perspective shooting style, with various characters handling the camera, and he adds a third-person viewpoint via a series of security cameras that Daniel has installed in the house after one particular destructive incident that looks like a break-in.

One of the biggest strengths of the original Paranormal was how it worked as a study of trust and honesty in a relationship, and how the horror could be viewed as a manifestation of the central couple’s domestic problems. Paranormal 2 adds more characters and presents a more complex family situation, but its early scenes of home life, although generally well-acted, just feel like marking time, since anyone who’s seen the first movie knows exactly what’s coming. While Katie and Micah were clearly defined as people before they started getting terrorized by a demon, Kristi and her family never move past one-dimensional.

But when the scares start, the bigger budget really proves to be an advantage, and Williams stages some pretty creepy scenes, especially playing on the vulnerability of a small child. Paranormal 2 still relies on a lot of sudden loud noises that jolt the audience, but it also features some of the same subtle scares that worked so well the last time. Audiences looking for nothing more than to jump out of their seats a few times will probably come away satisfied.

Anyone actually invested in the storytelling of the first movie, though, may be dismayed at how thoroughly Paranormal 2 undermines so many of the events in that film, indulging in the lame tendency of horror sequels to overcomplicate the mythology of their villains. Paranormal 2 ends with an epilogue that serves as a true sequel, and it sets up the demon of the two films as a sort of successor to Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers or Jigsaw. With the first Paranormal Activity, we witnessed the exciting debut of a fresh talent; with the sequel, we’re witnessing the studio-mandated birth of a new milked-to-death horror franchise.