Over-active

Today, I went to see Paranormal Activity 2, the sequel to last year's low-budget sensation. I know you're supposed to "strike while the iron is hot," but I think this sequel could have benefited from some extra time spent on the script before rushing it into theaters.

It's not a bad movie, actually. But it's also not really a different movie. On the one hand, it's rather clever the way this sequel ties itself in with the original, adding to the overall narrative and providing new context for the events of the first film. But while this movie fleshes out the overall story in a satisfying way, it's lacking in the good moments that really make a suspense movie tick.

Specifically, there are virtually no "gags" in the movie that aren't directly copied from the first film. There's a Ouija board sequence, a dragged-by-the-foot sequence, a strange and loud noises coming from downstairs sequence. Some of these moments are perhaps realized better than they were in the first film, but not so much better that they justify the repetition.

I noted that the most significant flaw of the original was a mistaken pacing of the plot. Things "escalated" too quickly, with a can't-be-ignored event happening too early in the film for the characters' behavior to be credible afterward. This movie does better justice to its characters, but slacks in its duty to the audience. In Paranormal Activity 2, a half hour of the movie unspools before anything really "happens," and even then things begin at a sluggish pace.

In a strange way, though the story is completely dependent on the film's connection to its predecessor, it would stand better on its own if the first film had never existed. The scary moments would play scarier if you hadn't seen their like before. The slow wind-up of the tension in the first act wouldn't leave the audience quite so impatient if it didn't feel like things were struggling to reach the level of another film.

In short, it's possible that Paranormal Activity 2 is actually a better movie than the first one. But it also feels like hours three and four of one long movie, and no on-the-cheap, camcorder-filmed, "things that go bump in the night" movie could possibly hold anyone's attention for four hours. This movie rode a line for me between a B- and a C+. I tend toward the latter right now; if I had waited say two years after seeing the original rather than one, I'd probably shift it up to the former.