Guest writer Parker Mott returns to brave more "found footage" in the sequel to last year's indie horror phenomenon, Paranormal Activity 2. Does it live up to the hype? Read on to find out!

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Like its predecessor, Paranormal Activity 2 is more about an atmosphere than a film in itself. At least most of us have gotten past the cockamamie myth that this is actually real. The sequel here is a spook show, a haunted house based only on surprises never interest. We demand nothing else from the movie other than it to scare the goosebumps off us. When footage of those azure-night visioned camera arise we hold our breath; when the morning dawn, we can breathe.

Paranormal Activity 2 is not exactly a good movie but it will deliver on the nightmares. Throughout the film I became fascinated by the audience, not the film in front of me: I noticed several people, staring with cavernous gazes, mouths gaped, and huddled into the fetal position (knocking over the popcorn next to them). We wait...wait...wait. Then BANG! The audience jumps, squeals - then recoils and would you know, start to laugh. This is why Paranormal Activity 2 interests me: it exposes the audience-performer relationship to a tee, and even when the scares are absent, this is an audience in the exact uneasy state that you are in.

Now if Paranormal Activity bored you, aggravated you, or frustrated you, this sequel will do the same. It's essentially the same thing - only, it gives you a reason to go out to theatres and get scared again. After the first Paranormal Activity film was made for a frugal ten thousand dollars, director Tod Williams and his team at Paramount budgeted the film at two million (still chunk-change in Hollywood) and have already grossed up to twenty million on their first weekend.

That must explain Paranormal Activity 2's dispiriting ending. It's essentially the same finale as the first one, with that famous shot of a body flying (I will say no more). But why set this thing up for a sequel? Paranormal Activity may become a profit game - a haunted house that stifles your money and delivers monotonous scares.

You can already sense the monotony here. Security cameras are set up around the house of a four-member family (just recently four as the mother just gave birth to little Hunter - he cries profusely). Their alert canine barks late into the night at suspicious ambience which makes us shuffle uneasily in our seats. But those security cameras detract a little from what made Paranormal Activity so original: it was that one-iconic static shot that transfixed our eyes. That shot signified a scare to come, but we never knew from where: out in the hall, under the bed, in front of the camera, or under the bed sheets? Here the security cameras are a repetitive process of navigating the house where the scares only can be treated as props.

Paranormal Activity 2 still delivers. You will count the minutes waiting for the scares, but when they come you will not be let down. I have already warned that those who repudiated the first film will find themselves rolling around in their criticisms here. Paranormal Activity 2 is the same format, but it delivers scares that should shell shock you. I'll rather embrace this film now and quarrel around the 3D threequel that I predict will release next year.

- Parker Mott

Parker Mott is a regular contributor to From Dusk Till Con. You can read many more of Parker's critical writings and general musings on film at his personal blog, The Final Take with Parker Mott, at http://parkerfinaltake.blogspot.com/.

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