FILM REVIEW- PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

FILM REVIEW: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2!

 Paranormal Acitivity 2 is a haunting film directed by Todd Willaims and produced by Oren Peli  and the Characters include Katerina and her husband Daniel, with their stepdaughter Ali, the baby Hunter and a dog – are freaked out by a mystery break-in and install spy cameras. Katerina has suspicions that the haunting may be connected with her sisters Katies childhood incidents. All the expected phenomena take place (including one good shock in broad daylight), but most of the action happens at night and midnight where conventions of horror usually take place at that time. Doors open and close by themselves, shadows hover, a sensitive dog is targeted and characters are dragged by unseen presences all these aspects are good codes and conventions of horror that the film portrays as many things are going to go bump in the night, viewed from a variety of fixed-angle CCTV cameras, in the Southern Californian home of a four-strong family. The movie establishes a recurrent surveillance pattern with a sequence of shots, culminating in the baby’s bedroom, where the demonic prowling ultimately feel targeted. Moreover, the use of the CCTV cameras make the audience feel more close and part of the action as we are seeing what is happening through our point of view of the characters making it more tense to watch! The narrative of the story is in a huge american house which reflects the horror genre (codes and conventions) as everything is bound to get creepy in a big haunting house! Moreover, the mise en scene of the story is set at night time where creepy things bump in the dark, objects move around and things smash on the floor. There is good uses of silence in the film as during the night time when everyone is asleep the CCTV cameras is all we see and the silence of everything still builds up suspense and tension as something always pops up in the screen frightening  the audience and making them jump. It has us scanning the frame for minutes on end, listening for tell-tale thumps up the stairs, and then watching for that inexplicable thing that’s surely about to happen in one murky corner of the screen. Moreover, the static shots of empty rooms are held so long that your eye wanders all over the frame looking for the intruder or the movement. The movie is again set in a big beautiful house where unexpected things happen like it did in first one, so for some people the freaky actions that take place can be predictable for some people as they know what is expected. The film definitely fits the genre of a typical horror film as it is based around ghosts lurking around a haunting house patronizing the humans living in it through the use of the banging noises of the doors, floor boards creaking and objects moving!

If you liked the original Paranormal Activity, you'll like this one as the the mood, atmosphere and creepiness was full of intensity so i rate this film 7/10 stars!!