Paranormal Activity 2

Almost a year to the day that I saw the first bump-in-the-night-a-thon that was Paranormal Activity and was quite impressed with the film that was made on a budget so low it could have been crowned Limbo Champion of the World many times over.
But hang on, didn't things not end so well for our lovely couple in the last film? How on earth does one make a sequel without zombies?
Hello, Prequel.
Writer/director of the first film Oren Peli wrote the screenplay for the prequel but left all the heavy lifting to director Tod Williams (The Adventures Of Sebastian Cole).
The supposedly fear-inducing 'footage has been found...' subtitles appear on screen but we, as thinking human beings, know that the footage is not real and we are in fact watching a movie based on fictional events not a documentary.
Some time in the past a young family bring home their newborn son, Hunter, from the hospital. Dad (I can't remember his name and imdb.com does not have any of the cast listed as of yet) and his second wife live with Dad's daughter from his first marriage and their dog. Lucky for us, this family has a love of documenting everything on camera.
One night a few years after Hunter's birth the family come home to discover their house has been ransacked. Every piece of furniture has been over turned, personal items strewn across the room. However nothing was taken and Hunter's room has not been touched.
Dad gets some security guys to mount cameras and motion detectors around the house to a) make them feel more secure and b) free up family members from constantly having to film their every move.
We soon learn that Mum is actually Katie Featherstone's sister and that Katie's husband Micah is still alive. An on-screen subtitle lets us know that what we are seeing occurred 60 days before Micah's death.
Mum and Daughter soon get freaked out about bumps in the night while skeptical Dad fires their superstitious, Spanish housekeeper for trying to exorcise bad spirits from the house with flaming herbs. If only he knew...
Much like the original, the bumps in the night escalate and soon bodies are being pulled down stairs as skeptic Dad becomes scared Dad.
We learn a few interesting things like why Katie and Micah were haunted and how to make a pool cleaner machine thing jump out of the water.
There is a science to scary movies. The sure way to scare someone is to have a long quiet period followed by a loud noise. The equation looks like this... long quiet period + loud noise = jumpy audience.
However, if a soft rumble that gradually gets louder is experienced before the loud noise then the equation doesn't work. You don't tell your audience something scary is about to happen, you just make it happen! It's like I was given a letter a few weeks in advance that said 'Pardon my intrusion, just letting you know that...'
As I walked in to the cinema I could stop comparing the original Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project. Both original films were very good. Thanks to practically no marketing, the audiences had no idea what to expect and both films were very well received. Both low budget, both raked it in at the box office. Then some bright spark made The Blair Witch Project 2. We had more characters, audiences knew what to expect and the film itself was total crap.
Is PA2 the same? Kind of. There are a couple more characters, I knew what to expect (and was given EXACTLY that) but I wouldn't say the film was total crap. It was more a case of Same Shit, Different House. Perhaps that might be a better subtitle for the film! Although we did learn something new this time around, it wasn't enough to warrant another whole film (albeit one that is only 90 minutes long).
Things I learnt: don't hang you pots and pans from the ceiling, put them in a cupboard; keep a key under a pot plant by the door; if you're in a horror movie, don't use an Ouija board and finally; keep your ghosts to yourself.
Someone should have called the Winchesters long ago.
Handy tip - keep an eye out for reflections in mirrors and shadows...
Entertaining but nothing new to see here, move a long.
Six out of ten.