Oct
22
“Paranormal Activity 2″ Review
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About a third of the way into “Paranormal Activity 2,” I started to get a little bored. I’d gone in imagining the ultimate experience in grueling terror (apologies to Sam Raimi) and had only been given a brief start by a pan that just won’t stay on its hook. So, as I began to slip into a sense of complacency, the film hit the audience with the mother of all jump scares — KA-BOOM! I’d never leaped out of my seat quite like that before. The audience collectively shat itself. I tip my hat to the filmmakers for taking the slow burn route and blindsiding us with that gag.
Is “Paranormal Activity 2″ scarier than the first film (read my review here)? I’d have to say not quite, but it’s still a wild ride, particularly the second half. I don’t want to spoil any of the big scares. What I like about the film once it takes off are the subtler moments of sheer creepiness and dread. A couple gags are all about what you don’t see or what’s lurking right about the corner. It’s so damn effective. Polanski would love it, and not just because there’s a 13-year-old in the film.
Without completely spoiling the first film, “Paranormal Activity 2″ is for the most part a prequel. Katie and Micah, the ill-fated heroes of the original, return for this installment but aren’t the film’s focus. Move two follows Katie’s sister Kristi — briefly mentioned in the original — and her husband Dan. At the beginning, they’re celebrating the birth of their son, Hunter; Dan also has a teenage daughter, Ali, from a previous relationship. After a home invasion in which nothing is stolen but practically everything’s destroyed, Dan installs closed-circuit cameras all around the house; an alarm system may have been a better choice, but whatever. Dan and Ali also take turns filming the everyday banalities of their lives, visits from Katie and Micah and Hunter’s first few months.
It isn’t long before the cameras start capturing bits of inexplicable weirdness: Hunter’s mobile moving, doors opening and closing, lights going turning on and off. Dan’s remains skeptical, Ali’s hopeful it’s her late mother trying to make contact with them, and Kristi’s convinced it’s something else entirely, the same something that she and her sister Katie will only discuss privately in hushed tones.
Fans of the first film know exactly what it is, and as “Paranormal Activity 2″ unfolds, the presence (announced by a low droning sound you can feel in your guts) becomes more aggressive. Giving away anything else would eliminate the fun of going in unspoiled. It’s critical to watch this in a first-run theater with a state-of-the-art sound system and an audience of screamers. “Paranormal Activity 2″ is a reminder of how you don’t need goofy 3D glasses to be fully immersed in a film. Yes, it’s got jump scares in spades (and a false one near the beginning that I loved to pieces), but the tension that’s built by its use of negative space and stillness and sound design is what sets this film apart. There just aren’t enough horror movies that understand how to scare the shit out of audiences these days. I’m looking at you, “Saw” franchise.
-Brad Lohan
Oct
6
For class, I’m writing a screenplay about an alien invasion. I have an approach I’ve been kicking around for about two years now. When I originally conceived of the script, it had been a few years since “Tom Cruise Conquers the Martians” came out. There hadn’t been much of resurgence of interest in creature features between that film’s release and when I first got the kernel of the idea. My, how times have changed.
My initial attempt at writing the script was back in late-2008/early-2009. I wrote about 40 or so pages, got stuck and put it on the shelf. It was all concept at that point. I dusted the material off for class last semester and wrote a pretty workable treatment. I’m finding out now that my second act is a little weak, but not disastrously so.
The worst part about the process of writing “Death From Above” isn’t having to beef up any narrative weak spots. Rather, it’s the glut of alien invasion movies that are due to come out in the following months. Last year’s sleeper “District 9″ began the onslaught (and compelled me to change a subplot that I’d lifted from the 1950s film “The Quatermass Xperiment”). On the horizon, there’s “Skyline,” “Battle: Los Angeles” and “The Darkest Hour.” Even “V” has returned to television!
What blows about the existence of these movies is that each of them — well, maybe not “Skyline” — has forced me to make some major change to my script, so as to avoid being similar. “District 9″ forced me to eliminate from the story the hero’s gradual transformation into an alien creature; “Battle: Los Angeles” caused me to rethink making the combat scenes reminiscent of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars; “The Darkest Hour” prevented me from setting the bulk of the action in Moscow. It’s aggravating that I keep having to lose some key element of the story, what interested me in the material in the first place, because another dopey movie beat me to the finish line.
I don’t mind “paying homage” to movies that are sick old, like “Quatermass Xperiment,” because contemporary audiences can’t remember what they had for breakfast, much less a 55-year-old British science fiction film. But having striking similarities to fairly recent movies — beyond the simple alien invasion setup — makes me feel like an also-ran instead of a fresh voice. Fortunately, my core concept hasn’t changed all that much since its inception…yes, since Leonardo DiCaprio entered my dreams and seeded the idea in my mind.
Here’s hoping that these movies are at least wildly popular and create an appetite for what I have to offer.
-Brad Lohan