"I hate it when you don't take me seriously."To business: Paranormal Activity 2 is much better than the first film, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. One major advantage for this sequel is that it centres on a largely amiable and credible family set-up (the dog and the toddler are excellent!), as opposed to the unattractively smug couple seen previously. The film is structured very closely on the original, with the same enclosed setting and the 'Night' numbered title screens used to prepare the viewer for the next happening, but the more spacious family home here gives the viewer ample opportunity to keep scanning the screen for 'activity' in the oft-used static extra long shots. The sequel employs more overt references to traditional horrors such as The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, with the shocks being bigger, louder and better placed here. The narrative and time-frame conceits that link the sequel to the events of the original movie are used cleverly and effectively with a good pay-off in the final scenes, which are swift, brutal yet utterly predictable, the latter being a problem which runs through the movie consistently. Unlike last year's film, Paranormal Activity 2's ending points to only one possible and more literal threequel movie, which will no doubt be inevitable as this franchise takes over from Saw as a regular Halloween fixture, a true triumph of marketing over content and substance.
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