Last weekend, I went along with some friends to see Paranormal Activity 2. I never had any interest in seeing it, but I was dragged along for the ride. They paid for me to see it and I went in with extremely low expectations. I was expecting it to be a repeat of the first movie but with more money thrown in, since the first film made a ridiculous profit. I expected to be so bored that I’d actually fall asleep during a movie for the first time in my life. I almost fell asleep during the first movie, and I thought the second would be so much more of the same that it’d actually put me down for the count. It almost lived up to my extremely low expectations.
The first film was basically like Big Brother but with ghosts. This time it’s more like the Osbournes but with a dog and a baby involved in these demonic ghostly shenanigans. Both films follow the same formula: Demon is haunting a house by opening doors and making things fall and turning lights on and off, one person plays Ouija and pisses off the demon, demon feeds off fear and negativity which one person in said house is expressing throughout much of the movie, said scared person becomes possessed, uses demonic power to kill husband, the end. They’re the same movie, except part 2 has more people, more haunted spooky stuff happening, and more people getting killed. Oh, and because of the higher budget, they can get away with bigger scares. Problem with the scares is that in all but one instance, they’re exactly the same gimmick! Let’s throw seven jump-scares that will make the audience go deaf into one movie! Brilliant, that doesn’t get old and predictable after the first three times.
To break away from the monotony of showing us the same dead silence moments where nothing happens followed by something creepy followed by a jump scare more than a handful of times, one of the characters becomes possessed. It’s at this point that the movie starts to get a little better, and that’s only for the last 15-20 minutes or so. I was okay with the possession because it made sense for a demon to want to possess someone. It’s what happens with the possession that made me want to get up and leave. They tried too hard to tie the two films together, and it seems like they only really tried to connect the two by making a strong direct connection in the last 5-10 minutes. It came off as really cheap and hashed together. The entire movie could’ve dealt without the demon from both films being one and the same. Because of this, it ended up being that most of what you’ve just seen was Paranormal Activity 0, and the last 5 minutes was really Paranormal Activity 2. It just came off as a really cheap cop-out.
I hope that the DVD offers multiple endings, like the first movie’s DVD release. This theatrical ending was no good if you ask me. The first movie’s DVD ending was crap and didn’t link up with the second movie at all. The theatrical ending of the first film was the legit, canon ending. I hope the theatrical ending of the second film isn’t the real ending, otherwise you can’t even pay me to see the third one (if one is ever made, which I’m sure there will be seeing as Hollywood is really grasping and milking lately). I honestly wouldn’t recommend anyone wasting their time or money on this unless they have someone to go with that will make the experience enjoyable. Don’t see it alone, you’ll regret it. You’ll never get that time back.
