PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2

The Ray couple recently moved into a new house in California; with them are their teenage daughter Ali, newborn Hunter, the dog Abby, and the nanny Martine. Following the break-in of some vandals, who ransacked the house, the Rays decide to install a series of closed-circuit cameras throughout the house. But a strange presence begins to wreak havoc in the house and seems to aim especially at little Hunter. Only the cameras can testify what happens at night in the Ray house. In 2009, "Paranormal Activity" was a cinematic case: from a semi-amateur film (about $15,000 budget and no experience on the part of the authors) it reached great box office earnings (over $100 million in the US alone) thanks to an effective marketing campaign and a staging that was as sparse as it was truly unsettling. With such data, it was easy to expect that Hollywood would get its hands on the work to turn it into the new horror golden goose and so it was. Paramount takes the reins of the project, beefs up the budget to nearly $3 million, enriches the cast, and entrusts it all to a new director, Tod Williams, who in the past had a drama with Jeff Bridges ("The Door in the Floor"). The result at the box office is one that makes producers rub their hands and spurs them to put the number 3 in the works, but in fact we have a qualitative step backward that makes every frame reveal the haste of the operation. The reasons why "Paranormal Activity 2" doesn't work are inversely proportional to the strengths of "Paranormal Activity." The small film by Oren Peli - who here carves out the role of producer - managed to create tension and unease by showing little but effectively drip-feeding fear in well-proposed situations. Paradoxically, the sequel is more parsimonious with scary moments and engages in such a meticulous way in postponing opportunities for fear that it inevitably turns into boredom. "Paranormal Activity 2," in fact, uses the night sessions, i.e., those in which the presence should manifest itself, in continuous false alarms, concentrating the nighttime footage that makes up the first 50 minutes of the film in fixed shots of the various monitored areas in which practically nothing happens. If Peli in the first film brought the story immediately to the heart of the matter showing a crescendo of paranormal manifestations, Williams in the sequel fails to calibrate the paranormal activities. We will thus have an excessively static first hour and a finale bloated with events to the point that everything that happens has the effect of leaving the viewer indifferent. In "Paranormal Activity" it was enough for a door to close slowly or the sound of footsteps on the stairs to make the viewer's skin crawl, in the sequel children floating and people dragged by an invisible force throughout the house do not manage to hit more than that, especially because they all arrive together when the viewer has long been lulled to sleep. Another winning element of "Paranormal Activity" was the point of view on the protagonists' bed, a fixed camera that literally violated the couple's intimacy and conveyed that sense of vulnerability that only when you sleep can you reach. In "Paranormal Activity 2" this is lacking because the electronic eyes multiply, quintuple, and settle in less strategic places for the creation of spectator anxiety. The closed circuit monitors the pool, the entrance, the kitchen, the living room, and the child's room; in the first four nothing practically ever happens, in the last one from time to time the light goes out and something attracts the dog's attention. The whole thing ends up minimizing the moments of terror simply because there is a lack of adequate choice of places and moments to be shaken up with the intrusion of the supernatural. The fact of having increased the number of characters also plays against the tension because there is a lack of a character with whom to identify and on whom to concentrate the paranormal attention. If in the first film there was Kate, here it sometimes seems to be Ali, the girl, other times Kristi, the mother, keeping in mind that it seems to be Hunter, the child, the demon's point of interest. You will understand that in a situation like this it is also difficult to set up a good mockumentary. Director and screenwriters then wanted to play it safe in an even excessive way, since "Paranormal Activity 2" has a narrative structure practically identical to that of the first film, with the inclusion - which fails - of a person endowed with beneficial faculties (here it is the nanny of Hispanic origin who knows well the practices to drive away evil), attempt at a Ouija board séance and even research - which is successful - on the web. In short, every element seems to refer to Oren Peli's film, with the sole exception of the final climax which here is plagiarized from "Rec"... well, let's say from "Quarantine," since in America they knew the remake. So does "Paranormal Activity 2" not convince at all? It's not quite like that. The temporal structure that connects this film to its predecessor is intriguing and appreciated in its being both a prequel and a sequel to "Paranormal Activity." The story takes place before the events narrated in the first film but then finds a point of connection and even manages to show the consequences of the tragic night of October 2006. The way in which elements are added to the main story and the introduction of twists that bring clarity to the story of Kate and Micah is appreciable and thus there is a sense of completeness such as to give the two films the possibility of being seen as a single work. Some individual moments of fear also work in their simplicity and in this regard the scene at "Poltergeist" where the kitchen literally explodes or the moment when Ali falls asleep in front of the TV should be mentioned. In general, however, "Paranormal Activity 2" appears to be an unnecessary attempt to strike while the iron is hot without having the right ideas to do so. It is replicated with carbon paper, it focuses on static and boredom, it reduces the moments of fear. Take note of these data and evaluate whether it is really worth giving this sequel a chance.