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Few suc­cess­ful hor­ror movies have been as con­tro­ver­sial within the hor­ror com­mu­nity as the first Paranormal Activity.  This cheaply pro­duced but con­cep­tu­ally savvy ghost story was mostly received by hor­ror fans in two ways: either as proof that low-budget hor­ror films could still be inven­tive and acces­si­ble or as a second-rate recy­cling of The Blair Witch Project (Your Humble Reviewer’s stance: The Blair Witch Project is amongst the most wildly over­rated hor­ror films of the last two decades and Paranormal Activity improved on it in just about every way).  That said, it’s huge cost-to-profit ratio ensured that a sequel would inevitably be brought out.

And that brings us to Paranormal Activity 2.  This is a dif­fi­cult film to syn­op­size because its effec­tive­ness depends on sur­prise and allow­ing the story to unfold organ­i­cally but the fol­low­ing will do its best to avoid spoil­ers.  As with the first film, peo­ple move into a new home and find them­selves preyed  upon by the dark side of the spirit world.  This time it’s a young fam­ily who are first tipped off to the bad vibes when some­one or some­thing ran­sacks the house while they are out but doesn’t steal any­thing aside from a piece of jew­elry.  From there, things ramp up in a slow-burn fash­ion until the fam­ily is forced to con­front their unseen attacker.

The basic beats of the story remain the same but, to their credit, the film­mak­ers find inter­est­ing ways to add vari­ety to Paranormal Activity 2.  The expanded cast adds a lit­tle more dra­matic vari­ety to the sto­ry­line, specif­i­cally in the ways each char­ac­ters copes with the spirit world.  It’s also a sur­pris­ingly plot-intensive film, with the documentary-inspired act­ing and verite-by-way-of-security-cams visual style allow­ing it to  offer a fresh spin on hor­ror arche­types (a gen­er­a­tional curse, mak­ing bar­gains with evil forces, etc.) that would seem old hat oth­er­wise.  It’s also worth not­ing that this sequel ties itself to the events of the pre­vi­ous film in a clever way that cre­ates a kind of shared mythol­ogy between the two.

The film’s style is nec­es­sar­ily lim­ited by its visual approach (secu­rity cams and hand-held video devices) but direc­tor Tod Williams makes it work, manip­u­lat­ing sound design and edit­ing in a way that achieves the nec­es­sary scares with­out over­do­ing it.  Williams comes from a drama back­ground (his last credit was the drama The Door In The Floor) so he’s atten­tive to the per­for­mances and gets unforced, believ­able work from his actors.  The result main­tains the found-footage illu­sion and is truly creepy in spots.

How well you respond to this sequel will depend upon how much you liked the first film but Paranormal Activity 2 deserves credit for tack­ling its obligatory-sequel task with more ambi­tion than any­one expected.  If you liked the first one, it’s def­i­nitely worth a look — and try to see it with a big crowd to get the full effect.