Paranormal Activity 2
Oct. 27th, 2010 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorhathorI saw "Paranormal Activity 2" and, of course, can't resist talking about it at length, and seeing as how my LJ calendar has a big space in it for Wednesdays, today is a great day to do my write-up. :)
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
First off, if you didn't like the first one, you probably won't get much out of this one. The two movies are very similar, except that while in the first one, it seemed to be more a random demon going after Katie for random reasons, and in this movie, they set up a background mythology for the series. If you weren't invested in the first movie, you might think the background myths are silly. I don't know, it's one of those things where you either think it's cool or you don't.
Lessee, background info is part 2 is basically a prequel that ties the two movies together fairly well. We see what's going on over at Kristi's house, Kristi being Katie's little sister. This all takes place about two & 1/2 months before Micah is murdered. Well, first we see Kristi's first kid, Hunter, being brought home from the hospital, then it jumps ahead about a year to when the kid is one years old. So now, we're in August 2006. Kristi has a teenage stepdaughter and is married to some guy whose name I can't remember, so we'll call him Asshole Dad. You'll see why later. I think the teen stepdaughter's name is Alli. There's also Martine, the Hispanic nanny and maid, and Abby, a German Shepherd, the family's pet. (They shouldn't have made the dog's name so similar to the stepdaughter's name; it pretty much made it impossible for me to remember any name but the dog's and then I had to look up Alli's name on various websites to confirm it. X_x Anywho...)
Katie and Micah both come over to visit and attend pool parties and shit. Katie parades around the pool with her amazing rack, and they look pretty real! XD There wasn't nearly enough Micah in this. I'm sorry, I have a soft spot for the character; he's very funny and simply has a lot of qualities that I like in a guy. So I wanted to see more of him. Boo! He sees Asshole Dad using his camera and seems to want one too, even suggesting that AD and Kristi may've gotten "extracurricular" with their camera on, a nod back to the first movie. I also found out that Katie Featherston (the actress) is a native Texan WOOOOOOOOO!!!! *rock fist*
One day, Kristi's family comes home to find their entire house torn apart. It doesn't really look like someone was trying to burglarize the house, but trash it. In fact, nothing of value is missing. They have security cameras installed all over the house in case it happens again. This is how we see what happens with the demon, through the eyes of the security camera and one hand-held that is occasionally used. I thought that was a very nice idea, the security camera thing.
Of course, if you aren't aware, the trashing of the house was committed by a demon that has been following the girls' family around for years. Apparently, he's back, ready to cause more mischief and mayhem.
The reason that I say that some people will have trouble getting into the movie is that it takes a long, long time to get going, and even then, the scares are few and far between. There are a couple of moments that made me smile at the demon because they were so mischievous and *evil laugh* kind of things. At one point, Kristi puts some water on to boil and sits down to read a magazine, and suddenly, every cabinet in the kitchen slams open at the same time. It scares the shit out of Kristi (understandably!) and everyone in the audience, too! After I jumped, I started snickering, because it was just such a mischievous prank to pull. You could just hear that demon laughing at his own little trick. The second thing involves locking Alli out of the house, which I'll describe in its own paragraph since so much happened around that time.
The adults go out and leave Alli at home to babysit Hunter. Her little boyfriend comes over and they try to contact whatever is haunting the house with a Ouija board. At first, the boyfriend is pushing the planchette. They ask, "What do you want?" and the boyfriend makes it spell out, "P-U-S-S-Y." Alli collapses in giggles. After this, the demon takes over and begins to spell out what he really wants, which is Hunter. He gets as far as H-U-N-T when Alli comments something like, "You're on a pussy hunt?" and has another giggle fit. It's all really funny.
Later, the boyfriend has gone home and Alli hears a loud noise in the house. She goes around to investigate. One of the loud noises comes from the porch. Alli thinks her boyfriend is playing a trick on her, so she opens the front door and steps out onto the porch. Now, I know everyone's first reaction is what a stupid girl, stepping out on the porch, but I understood how it could happen that way. She's like, right in front of the door, mere inches from it, thinking she's going to find her boyfriend on the porch and can just step right back in if need be. But the demon slams the door closed and locks it. Hunter is still inside by himself, so you can see the panic inherent in this situation. Alli freaks out, tries to find a way back into the house, but can't.
Now, here's one reason why I call him Asshole Dad. When the parents come home, AD even watches the camera footage from where the door slammed closed by itself, and he still won't believe there's anything weird going on in his house. He says the wind blew the door closed and somehow locked it. Now, okay, I have seen gusts of wind that were strong enough to blow a door open or closed pretty hard, but in the case of blowing it closed, it was because there was another door open nearby, or maybe a window, and the wind was really, really strong that day. How does wind turn a lock? Moron.
Second, Asshole Dad fires Martine because she was doing "witchy stuff" to try to protect the house from evil spirits. Near the beginning of the movie, Martine is making the sign of the cross at all four corners of the living room while she's cleaning. Later, she's home alone with Hunter and weirds demony shit starts happening. She gets the baby and lights a bundle of sage, which she uses to cleanse the house. The parents come home while she's in the middle of doing this. The thing that I thought was funny is AD tells her to stop waving the sage bundle around, and she ignores him long enough to finish running the bundle around the kitchen window before putting it out. XD (She's not actually touching the window with it, just drawing an invisible line of energy around its perimeter.) After this, AD fires her. I'm pretty sure that's illegal, because he's basically firing her for her religious beliefs, and I'm sure some people would say he had a right to fire her because she was practicing her religious beliefs against his wishes in his home, but still... it's an asshole reason to fire someone! I mean, what's the big deal? Martine was trying to protect them. I just don't get why people freak out so much over witchy stuff. It's ignorance, I tells ya! I mean, okay, I would get it if the woman had done stuff like this, and taken it into even weirder areas, repeatedly even after AD had told her to stop many many times, but for all we saw, she'd only done it twice. It just seemed like to me that Asshole Dad was, well, being an asshole.
I don't get why they needed a nanny to begin with, really, since it didn't seem like Kristi had a job. :P
Along the way, Alli and her boyfriend stumble on some info on the net that they latch onto for some reason. It says that sometimes, a family will make a deal with a demon for wealth and power, and in return, must give the demon their first born son. Alli does further research and finds out that Katie and Kristi's family has not had any boys since the 1930's. Hunter is the first. (This only makes crossovers with "Supernatural" even easier!)
On the subject of Hunter, I have to say that there's actually a lot to laugh at in the movie, many of the laughs at the expense of Hunter being so cute. At times, this is a bit of a mistake, because it happens during scenes that are supposed to be tense. Then suddenly, Hunter will go, "Da da da da da bah bah boo!" and all the tension is gone. Or you'll see his chubby legs go walking by the camera. It just makes me wonder if they did it on purpose or if the baby just wouldn't stop talking (babies are awfully hard to control!).
For future reference, there's a scene where Kristi tries to get Hunter to say, "Da-da." This will be important later.
Asshole Dad did give us a couple of funny lines, though. Early in the movie, Kristi suggests he should get into the bathtub with her, and he says he's going to, "Release the kraken!" which is really funny. (Although he shouldn't have been able to make that joke in 2006. Nitpick!) Later, he's trying to cheer Kristi up and says something like if she won't smile, then the terrorists win. Heh.
Before I get to the ending, I had one more thing to nitpick. Kristi is played by the same chick who played Heather on "Jericho." Sprauge something. Yay, neat! BUT, this actress is almost 30. In the first movie, Katie looks at a picture of herself that she hasn't seen since the fire, which happened when she was eight. She says, "I haven't seen that picture in 15 years." 8+15=23. Katie should be 23. Kristi is 3 years younger than her. So, Kristi should be 20. There is no universe in which Sprauge looks 20, sorry. They messed with the ages there. I can deal with it, I guess, but it bothers me a little in terms of fanfic writing and making it somehow work.
Okay, here's how it ends. Kristi is alone in the house with the baby one night, and the demon drags her down the stairs and into the basement. This would have been a shocking scene if it hadn't all been spoiled in the commercial. -_-;; I wish I hadn't known that was going to happen since it was one of the scariest moments in the movie, and practically all of its power was drained beforehand. They've really got to stop spoiling movies in the commercials.
Anyway, Kristi is possessed after that. When AD and Alli come home, they find her unresponsive (like Katie was in the first movie) with a bite mark and scratches on her thigh. Naughty demon! Alli has a few nice moments when she's left alone with Kristi, who does a little Sigfried and Roy disappearing act with her (Where is Kristi? Hello Alli!). Alli watches the camera footage from the night before and sees Kristi get dragged down the stairs. She shows it to AD. He finally admits there is something supernatural going on in his house. AD calls Martine to help him. She says he has to annoint a cross (the same black cross from the first movie) and place it on Kristi's head to exorcise her. He does that after Kristi runs around the house with Hunter a bit; it's kind of a tedious scene, but they get the job done. Martine says that Kristi won't remember being possessed.
Now, what AD does next is the worst thing of all. He claims that Martine told him to do it, but I'm not sure I believe that. AD is talking to her and she's speaking in Spanish, and it doesn't seem like he really understands what she's saying, so until I can get a translation of what Martine actually said, I tend to believe that AD only understood some of it and filled in the rest himself. He claims that Martine told him to send the demon to someone else. So he sends it to Katie. It just so happens that they have that old picture of Katie in a photo album, and AD gets it and burns the edges off it (which isn't standard for most spells; most spells I've seen require you to completely burn a pic - this is another reason I think he thought up the spell himself instead of taking actual instruction from Martine) and does the spell to send the demon to Katie.
Three weeks later, Katie comes over and says that weird things are happening at her house now. She goes home and drives into the opening scene from the first movie.
Then the movie jumps ahead to the day after Micah was killed. Alli's away on a school trip. We see AD in his living room watching TV and Kristi in the nursery with Hunter. Another scene and there's AD, sitting on the couch, but something new has been added - you can see Katie standing in the background, wearing the clothes she had on when she killed Micah, her shirt still covered in blood. It's one of those jarring things you could miss if you're not paying attention, and then suddenly, GAAAAH, Katie!
Katie walks up behind Asshole Dad and breaks his neck. (Yay!) She then goes upstairs and rushes into the nursery. Kristi sees her coming, says, "Katie?" and in one big sweeping motion, Katie grabs her by the neck and throws her up against the camera in the ceiling, killing her. Katie picks up Hunter, grins, and walks out of the room with him. THE EEEEND. And they missed the obvious thing that *should* have happened as they were leaving the room (IMO), which would have been Hunter saying, "Da-da."
I'm glad that the demon got his revenge against AD for trying to send him away, but felt sorry for everyone else whose lives were destroyed by this deal.
I had the same reaction to this movie that I had to the first one - at first, I felt let down by the lack of scares where there could have been so many more. But now I'm finding myself wanting to see it again. I'm honestly not sure how to explain why I like these movies so much, I just do. Do I think it could have been done better? Hell yes. I get that they're trying to establish character, but I don't see why they couldn't include more scares in it as well. The first movie was only 80 minutes long! Do I wish I could make a movie like this and try to scare the pants off the audience even more? HELL YES SQUARED. Someday, someday...
Note: After looking it up, I see that Asshole Dad is named Daniel.
Funny work story - we're learning about looking up health insurance benefits right now, and today we worked on these worksheets in pairs. I noticed that one of the listed benefits was FAITH HEALER. It didn't seem to be covered on any plan (which isn't a surprise), but we were just amused with the fact that it was on there to begin with, because that means that somewhere, at some time, someone tried to get a faith healing covered by their insurance. XD "God will HEEEEAL you! You can WAAAAALK! That'll be $500, do you have Blue Cross?" O_o hee
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
First off, if you didn't like the first one, you probably won't get much out of this one. The two movies are very similar, except that while in the first one, it seemed to be more a random demon going after Katie for random reasons, and in this movie, they set up a background mythology for the series. If you weren't invested in the first movie, you might think the background myths are silly. I don't know, it's one of those things where you either think it's cool or you don't.
Lessee, background info is part 2 is basically a prequel that ties the two movies together fairly well. We see what's going on over at Kristi's house, Kristi being Katie's little sister. This all takes place about two & 1/2 months before Micah is murdered. Well, first we see Kristi's first kid, Hunter, being brought home from the hospital, then it jumps ahead about a year to when the kid is one years old. So now, we're in August 2006. Kristi has a teenage stepdaughter and is married to some guy whose name I can't remember, so we'll call him Asshole Dad. You'll see why later. I think the teen stepdaughter's name is Alli. There's also Martine, the Hispanic nanny and maid, and Abby, a German Shepherd, the family's pet. (They shouldn't have made the dog's name so similar to the stepdaughter's name; it pretty much made it impossible for me to remember any name but the dog's and then I had to look up Alli's name on various websites to confirm it. X_x Anywho...)
Katie and Micah both come over to visit and attend pool parties and shit. Katie parades around the pool with her amazing rack, and they look pretty real! XD There wasn't nearly enough Micah in this. I'm sorry, I have a soft spot for the character; he's very funny and simply has a lot of qualities that I like in a guy. So I wanted to see more of him. Boo! He sees Asshole Dad using his camera and seems to want one too, even suggesting that AD and Kristi may've gotten "extracurricular" with their camera on, a nod back to the first movie. I also found out that Katie Featherston (the actress) is a native Texan WOOOOOOOOO!!!! *rock fist*
One day, Kristi's family comes home to find their entire house torn apart. It doesn't really look like someone was trying to burglarize the house, but trash it. In fact, nothing of value is missing. They have security cameras installed all over the house in case it happens again. This is how we see what happens with the demon, through the eyes of the security camera and one hand-held that is occasionally used. I thought that was a very nice idea, the security camera thing.
Of course, if you aren't aware, the trashing of the house was committed by a demon that has been following the girls' family around for years. Apparently, he's back, ready to cause more mischief and mayhem.
The reason that I say that some people will have trouble getting into the movie is that it takes a long, long time to get going, and even then, the scares are few and far between. There are a couple of moments that made me smile at the demon because they were so mischievous and *evil laugh* kind of things. At one point, Kristi puts some water on to boil and sits down to read a magazine, and suddenly, every cabinet in the kitchen slams open at the same time. It scares the shit out of Kristi (understandably!) and everyone in the audience, too! After I jumped, I started snickering, because it was just such a mischievous prank to pull. You could just hear that demon laughing at his own little trick. The second thing involves locking Alli out of the house, which I'll describe in its own paragraph since so much happened around that time.
The adults go out and leave Alli at home to babysit Hunter. Her little boyfriend comes over and they try to contact whatever is haunting the house with a Ouija board. At first, the boyfriend is pushing the planchette. They ask, "What do you want?" and the boyfriend makes it spell out, "P-U-S-S-Y." Alli collapses in giggles. After this, the demon takes over and begins to spell out what he really wants, which is Hunter. He gets as far as H-U-N-T when Alli comments something like, "You're on a pussy hunt?" and has another giggle fit. It's all really funny.
Later, the boyfriend has gone home and Alli hears a loud noise in the house. She goes around to investigate. One of the loud noises comes from the porch. Alli thinks her boyfriend is playing a trick on her, so she opens the front door and steps out onto the porch. Now, I know everyone's first reaction is what a stupid girl, stepping out on the porch, but I understood how it could happen that way. She's like, right in front of the door, mere inches from it, thinking she's going to find her boyfriend on the porch and can just step right back in if need be. But the demon slams the door closed and locks it. Hunter is still inside by himself, so you can see the panic inherent in this situation. Alli freaks out, tries to find a way back into the house, but can't.
Now, here's one reason why I call him Asshole Dad. When the parents come home, AD even watches the camera footage from where the door slammed closed by itself, and he still won't believe there's anything weird going on in his house. He says the wind blew the door closed and somehow locked it. Now, okay, I have seen gusts of wind that were strong enough to blow a door open or closed pretty hard, but in the case of blowing it closed, it was because there was another door open nearby, or maybe a window, and the wind was really, really strong that day. How does wind turn a lock? Moron.
Second, Asshole Dad fires Martine because she was doing "witchy stuff" to try to protect the house from evil spirits. Near the beginning of the movie, Martine is making the sign of the cross at all four corners of the living room while she's cleaning. Later, she's home alone with Hunter and weirds demony shit starts happening. She gets the baby and lights a bundle of sage, which she uses to cleanse the house. The parents come home while she's in the middle of doing this. The thing that I thought was funny is AD tells her to stop waving the sage bundle around, and she ignores him long enough to finish running the bundle around the kitchen window before putting it out. XD (She's not actually touching the window with it, just drawing an invisible line of energy around its perimeter.) After this, AD fires her. I'm pretty sure that's illegal, because he's basically firing her for her religious beliefs, and I'm sure some people would say he had a right to fire her because she was practicing her religious beliefs against his wishes in his home, but still... it's an asshole reason to fire someone! I mean, what's the big deal? Martine was trying to protect them. I just don't get why people freak out so much over witchy stuff. It's ignorance, I tells ya! I mean, okay, I would get it if the woman had done stuff like this, and taken it into even weirder areas, repeatedly even after AD had told her to stop many many times, but for all we saw, she'd only done it twice. It just seemed like to me that Asshole Dad was, well, being an asshole.
I don't get why they needed a nanny to begin with, really, since it didn't seem like Kristi had a job. :P
Along the way, Alli and her boyfriend stumble on some info on the net that they latch onto for some reason. It says that sometimes, a family will make a deal with a demon for wealth and power, and in return, must give the demon their first born son. Alli does further research and finds out that Katie and Kristi's family has not had any boys since the 1930's. Hunter is the first. (This only makes crossovers with "Supernatural" even easier!)
On the subject of Hunter, I have to say that there's actually a lot to laugh at in the movie, many of the laughs at the expense of Hunter being so cute. At times, this is a bit of a mistake, because it happens during scenes that are supposed to be tense. Then suddenly, Hunter will go, "Da da da da da bah bah boo!" and all the tension is gone. Or you'll see his chubby legs go walking by the camera. It just makes me wonder if they did it on purpose or if the baby just wouldn't stop talking (babies are awfully hard to control!).
For future reference, there's a scene where Kristi tries to get Hunter to say, "Da-da." This will be important later.
Asshole Dad did give us a couple of funny lines, though. Early in the movie, Kristi suggests he should get into the bathtub with her, and he says he's going to, "Release the kraken!" which is really funny. (Although he shouldn't have been able to make that joke in 2006. Nitpick!) Later, he's trying to cheer Kristi up and says something like if she won't smile, then the terrorists win. Heh.
Before I get to the ending, I had one more thing to nitpick. Kristi is played by the same chick who played Heather on "Jericho." Sprauge something. Yay, neat! BUT, this actress is almost 30. In the first movie, Katie looks at a picture of herself that she hasn't seen since the fire, which happened when she was eight. She says, "I haven't seen that picture in 15 years." 8+15=23. Katie should be 23. Kristi is 3 years younger than her. So, Kristi should be 20. There is no universe in which Sprauge looks 20, sorry. They messed with the ages there. I can deal with it, I guess, but it bothers me a little in terms of fanfic writing and making it somehow work.
Okay, here's how it ends. Kristi is alone in the house with the baby one night, and the demon drags her down the stairs and into the basement. This would have been a shocking scene if it hadn't all been spoiled in the commercial. -_-;; I wish I hadn't known that was going to happen since it was one of the scariest moments in the movie, and practically all of its power was drained beforehand. They've really got to stop spoiling movies in the commercials.
Anyway, Kristi is possessed after that. When AD and Alli come home, they find her unresponsive (like Katie was in the first movie) with a bite mark and scratches on her thigh. Naughty demon! Alli has a few nice moments when she's left alone with Kristi, who does a little Sigfried and Roy disappearing act with her (Where is Kristi? Hello Alli!). Alli watches the camera footage from the night before and sees Kristi get dragged down the stairs. She shows it to AD. He finally admits there is something supernatural going on in his house. AD calls Martine to help him. She says he has to annoint a cross (the same black cross from the first movie) and place it on Kristi's head to exorcise her. He does that after Kristi runs around the house with Hunter a bit; it's kind of a tedious scene, but they get the job done. Martine says that Kristi won't remember being possessed.
Now, what AD does next is the worst thing of all. He claims that Martine told him to do it, but I'm not sure I believe that. AD is talking to her and she's speaking in Spanish, and it doesn't seem like he really understands what she's saying, so until I can get a translation of what Martine actually said, I tend to believe that AD only understood some of it and filled in the rest himself. He claims that Martine told him to send the demon to someone else. So he sends it to Katie. It just so happens that they have that old picture of Katie in a photo album, and AD gets it and burns the edges off it (which isn't standard for most spells; most spells I've seen require you to completely burn a pic - this is another reason I think he thought up the spell himself instead of taking actual instruction from Martine) and does the spell to send the demon to Katie.
Three weeks later, Katie comes over and says that weird things are happening at her house now. She goes home and drives into the opening scene from the first movie.
Then the movie jumps ahead to the day after Micah was killed. Alli's away on a school trip. We see AD in his living room watching TV and Kristi in the nursery with Hunter. Another scene and there's AD, sitting on the couch, but something new has been added - you can see Katie standing in the background, wearing the clothes she had on when she killed Micah, her shirt still covered in blood. It's one of those jarring things you could miss if you're not paying attention, and then suddenly, GAAAAH, Katie!
Katie walks up behind Asshole Dad and breaks his neck. (Yay!) She then goes upstairs and rushes into the nursery. Kristi sees her coming, says, "Katie?" and in one big sweeping motion, Katie grabs her by the neck and throws her up against the camera in the ceiling, killing her. Katie picks up Hunter, grins, and walks out of the room with him. THE EEEEND. And they missed the obvious thing that *should* have happened as they were leaving the room (IMO), which would have been Hunter saying, "Da-da."
I'm glad that the demon got his revenge against AD for trying to send him away, but felt sorry for everyone else whose lives were destroyed by this deal.
I had the same reaction to this movie that I had to the first one - at first, I felt let down by the lack of scares where there could have been so many more. But now I'm finding myself wanting to see it again. I'm honestly not sure how to explain why I like these movies so much, I just do. Do I think it could have been done better? Hell yes. I get that they're trying to establish character, but I don't see why they couldn't include more scares in it as well. The first movie was only 80 minutes long! Do I wish I could make a movie like this and try to scare the pants off the audience even more? HELL YES SQUARED. Someday, someday...
Note: After looking it up, I see that Asshole Dad is named Daniel.
Funny work story - we're learning about looking up health insurance benefits right now, and today we worked on these worksheets in pairs. I noticed that one of the listed benefits was FAITH HEALER. It didn't seem to be covered on any plan (which isn't a surprise), but we were just amused with the fact that it was on there to begin with, because that means that somewhere, at some time, someone tried to get a faith healing covered by their insurance. XD "God will HEEEEAL you! You can WAAAAALK! That'll be $500, do you have Blue Cross?" O_o hee
