The 2nd review!
Tonight's movie for the second day of October is the sequel to the little horror movie that could...
Paranormal Activity 2. (2010)
Let me tell you something, as soon as I saw there was a dog in the trailer forever ago I IMMEDIATELY had an itchy "This movie is going to suck finger." I can take the Saw movies, people get blown up, people being eaten, and decapitations, but woe be to any movie that has a scene where a dog dies.
I was terribly worried about that because at some point in a movie with a dog and an evil spirit, the two HAVE to meet and something has to happen. Dogs can sense evil and when you have a demon there's no way it's going to let a dog constantly yell at him without doing anything. *SPOILERS* When the two do start to throw down the dog is dragged quickly off screen, and cries loudly (there are few things more heart breaking than a dog crying). The family quickly runs down to find out what happened and they take the dog to vet and they say she had seizures. So, the dog does not die, but getting the dog out of the picture is done really well. *END SPOILER*
The movie is actually quite good. The story is better, the acting is better, and things get explained a helluva lot better then I thought they could be. Now the reason the demon is there might be a little silly, but I like it more than a demon just deciding, "Hey, bad luck kid, I'm going to fuck up your world."
Sure there are some ridiculous scenes, but compared to Micah from the first one, they might as well be rocket scientists. Instead of taking the "I'm a hard ass" routine that the douche bag from the first one takes, the father is cynical instead, but the actor plays it like Dan the character is clinging to that because he doesn't want to believe, which is leaps and bounds better then the mind numbingly stupid actions of Micah from PA1.
As for the scares, they're there, there were some parts that made me audibly gasp. As an aside, scary movies don't get points for making me jump, I jump at everything, it got to the point where my friends would watch me when they knew something was going to happen in a horror movie. The movie that made me jump the most? Snakes on a Plane.
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, and was a tad shocked/amused by the ending. In both these movies the demon... builds... up... to... his... big... finish... very... slowly... It's kind of funny in a sick way that it seems like the demon just thinks to itself, "Ya know what? Fuck this. I'm going in."
I watched this by my lonely in the basement to try and see if a movie can still scare me, and while there are some scary scenes, unfortunately nothing truly scared me. that's the problem, I've seen so many horror movies and deaths on TV, that those movies don't scare me like they used to which is a bit of a downer. At some point I think I might review the last movie that actually did scare me. We'll see. With that being said, the movie was really good, and I do recommend this movie.
I'm changing my rating system because I realized my picture is a better rating.
So I'm giving this...