Thos movie had a lot on its shoulders right from the beginning. it had the reputation of the first one to live up to, and that movie made so much money on such a little budget and it ushered in the popularity of the whole "found footage horror" craze (seriously, for awhile there it seemed like every other movie that came out was a "found footage" movie). There really was no way for this movie to make its own way under the shadow of the first movie, but it did try, and I'm taking a second look at it today to see why I don't think it was successful.
This movie actually starts before the events of the first movie have taken place, and we get to see a middle aged couple shooting a video to welcome their newborn son Hunter into the house. they seem to be a likeable bunch, mom, dad, and teenage daughter. The woman is Katie's sister from the first movie, and we get to see how the demon wreaks more havoc here and slowly destroys the family. First their house is ransacked, which leads them to install a bunch of security cameras all over, and the rest of the movie is mostly footage from those cameras, allowing us to watch as things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon this world. Slowly (very slowly) strange and scary things start to happen, and they slowly get worse until the family has to make a choice in order to survive.
Maybe it's because there are more characters to introduce, but this movie seems to take longer than the first one, with just Micah and Katie to introduce. This movie has two parents and a teenager, as well as a nanny who plays a small but pivotal role. we also get introduced to the baby boy, who doesn't do much (because: baby) and we have to wait long stretches of time when nothing is happening. I guess this is supposed to build tension and get us to care about the family, but to me it was just tedious and boring. At least in the first one Micah and Katie realized right away that something supernatural was going on. In this sequel the dad takes FOREVER to admit that anything is even wrong, let alone that something supernatural is happening. And once he finally starts to acknowledge the ghostly elephant in the room, he makes some moves that make me REALLY not like him. I suppose, like the demonologist in the first movie he decides to act selfishly to protect himself and his family, but where these characteristics were endearing in the demonologist, they make the dad out to be a narcissistic monster. If you can'ttell, I still don't like him.
I got distracted after having to wait a million years for something to happen, so it might just be my bias, but I feel like when the scary things start happening they're not as scary as they were in the first movie. like great, we see that you can knock over some pans and move an Ouija board dy itself, thank you, now please do something actually scary. I forgot how the teenage daughter in this movie actually starts believing something evil is happening long before anyone else in the movie sees fit to acknowledge that anything is going on. That makes me like her more than I did when I first watched this movie. Overall I feel like the family is not as likeable as Micah and Katie from the first movie, so that makes it hard for me to care what happens to them. There are some good jump scares to be had here, but I still think they take way too long to happen. I will give it this, when the twist happens, it dies tie in really well with the first movie and makes it seem like it was planned out from the beginning, when I know that didn't happen that way from watching the documentary earlier. I suppose this movie is OK, and if it had been shorter with the extraneous stuff cut out I would probably like it more, but as it stands, I still think it doesn't live up to the original movie
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