Okay, so I just saw Paranormal Activity 2 and frankly I found it rather boring. It took forever to get any scary scenes and they weren't even scary. With the first Paranormal Activity all but 2 or 3 of the night time scenes contain some supernatural element to either scare you or creep you the fuck out but in Paranormal Activity 2 the first creepy thing happens at the 46 minute mark when you see the baby slowly being dragged backwards in his crib and then slowly being pulled out of it on his side by some unseen entity. Then there's the scene in the kitchen, during the day I might add, when all the cupboards suddenly fly open. Not scary but meant to be, just like when the daughter gets locked out of the house at night because the door slammed shut behind her. The only thing that really kind of creeped me out, but didn't scare me, was the scene most shown in the trailer and tv spots of the mother being dragged out of the baby's room at night.
The thing that really annoyed me about this one, aside from the lack of scary/creepy moments, was that instead of just the one camera, like in the first film, they've got six security camera's throughout the house and the camcorder that they carry around. I liked the one camera deal in the first film because when a night time scene came up you found yourself trying to focus on everything in the room hoping to be able to spot something moving but with the six camera's going they didn't stay on any one room long enough for anything to happen. Sure, when something did happen they left the angle on that one camera but I found that it kind of took away from the suspense aspect of the film. Also, I couldn't stand the dad. He was a real asshole.
I kind of liked how at the end of the movie they showed the very beginning of the first film but then they went back to the second film. I don't know what the point of that was. Adding in that little portion of the beginning of the first film was a nice touch for anyone who wants to make a combined edit of the two films but honestly, I don't think there was anything worth saving for an edit from the second film.
One thing I'm curious about though is how is Paranormal Activity 3 going to tie into all of this? The hauntings started in part 2 and part 1 starts off right where part 2 ends. According to the IMDB Katie will be in the third film, and I could have sworn I saw that Micah was in it too but now he's not listed for it and the last update is apparently from November but I only checked out the page the other day, but if we follow the chronology of the two films so far that leaves Katie on the run. Doesn't make for much of a haunted house movie now does it?