film criticism by maryann johanson | celebrating 25 years: 1997–2022
In Paranormal Activity 2, more regular folks in an ordinary suburban house are haunted by supernatural visitors while some cheap camcorders spy on it all for your entertainment. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
I suppose there’s a sort of cleverness in the direction Paranormal Activity 2 decided to take. Sequels are typically about one-upping their progenitor films by being bigger, faster, louder, more-er of everything. But the filmmakers went in the other direction: They aped the look and feel of Paranormal Activity but made everything else smaller and lesser. It’s a bold choice, if an odd one. And almost entirely predictably, it utterly fails to pay off.
