Review - Paranormal Activity 2

I've been putting off watching this movie for one reason; it centres around a baby. When I watched the first P.A., I was heavily pregnant with my youngest daughter. In fact, the morning after watching the movie, I was taken into  hospital and induced. Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the movie (it wasn't that good!) but the two are inextricably linked in my mind.

So when I saw the trailer for P.A.2, I mentally groaned. I hate anything bad happening to kids or animals in movies, and this film had both. When I watch a good movie or read a good book, I can't help but put myself in the place of the protagonists and watching something bad happen to a baby in a cot, when I had a baby in a cot upstairs, was just too much.

However, now my baby is more of a toddler so I forced myself to sit down and watch it.

The film starts in much the same way P.A. does. It's very slow at the beginning with not much happening except a few hints about a ghost. The couple in this movie are linked to the first P.A. as the wife is the sister of the woman in P.A. I wasn't expecting the first couple to show up, but they did and that's when I realised P.A. 2 is essentially the prequel to P.A. The couple have a new baby and they also have an older daughter who is the result of the husband's first marriage, but the girl's mother died.

There are all the same things going on--lots of action with a video camera coupled with footage taken from security cameras. There are things moving, doors slamming shut, kitchen cupboards opening all at once. It's the typical haunted house. What the directors do well is the anticipation of horror. Even though not much happens for the first forty-five minutes, I couldn't help but lean forward, gripped in the moment, trying to see the small spooky thing that was happening in the scene. For the most part everything is subtle--maybe a little too subtle--spooky noises, banging, pans falling down, doors moving slightly. But as soon as things focused back around the baby, I was hiding behind my pillow.

Overall, the ending left me with too many questions. It seemed very abrupt with little build up to the actual events. Also, as this movie was supposed to be a prequel, there is no way the things that happened in this movie wouldn't have tied in more with the first. The characters in P.A. would have definitely been mentioning the things that had just happened to their family. So for me it was just an okay movie. I will be watching P.A.3 however. It's supposed to be a prequel to the prequel, so it will be interesting to see how the directors handle that!

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Like things a bit on the spooky side? Why not try Marissa Farrar's short story collection, Where the Dead Live, only $0.99 from your favourite eBook store, including Amazon for your Kindle.