"If it ain't broken, don't fix it." Sticking with what works is exactly what director Tod Williams and the other makers of Paranormal Activity 2 did. This film has an extremely similar feel to the original, except is a little less subtle in its spookiness. While some may criticize this for simply being more of the same, I liked it. It had a few throwbacks and quite a few new creepy ideas. The story actually serves both as a prequel and sequel all in one and continues the false pretense that all the footage is real and recently released by the authorities.

This time around, the film centers upon the family of Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden), the sister of Katie (Katie Featherston) from the original, in their California home. Kristi is married to Dan (Brian Boland) who has a teenage daughter, Alli (Molly Ephraim), from another marriage. Kristi and Dan recently had a little boy named Hunter, who is nightly protected as he sleeps in his crib by the family German Shepherd named Abby. The family also employs a primarily Spanish-speaking housekeeper named Martine, who we will discover is more in tuned with the supernatural than any other character.

As more and more creepy things advance the story such as pots falling and doors slamming (a lot), the entire household except for Dan begins to suspect something not of this world is the driving force. Young Alli and her boyfriend begin conducting Internet research which suggests that a persistent spirit would most likely not be a ghost but rather a demon, and that this demon might be after the first born son on Kristi's side of the family as payment for a deal one may have made sometime in the past for something such as wealth. Alli researches her family tree and discovers that Hunter is the first boy to be born on this side of the family in 80 years.

The audience is not at first privy as to when this story is taking place. We see Katie show up at her sister's house and when asked where her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) was, she says that he couldn't make it today. That line coupled with a few joking lines about Katie being evil entices the audience to believe this story is occurring after the events of the first film. However, upon the arrival of Micah a bit later, we realize and are told that we are watching film from 60 days prior to his murder.

Several scary events take place over the course of 90 minutes which culminate to a suspenseful possession scene which ends in the basement of the house. Although the film does a rather clever job of connecting this story to the original, I will not reveal this information. I will only tease that at the end of this film we discover what happened immediately after Micah was killed in the first movie, which explains how this served as both a prequel and a sequel. However, if you are craving more details, I will necessarily give more as I review this film through a spiritual lens.

One of my primary focuses in grad school was to determine how films construct realities, or how they present the real world, so it was difficult for me not to notice what this film was saying about the supernatural. First of all, every woman in the story is more inclined to believe that a spiritual force of some kind is behind all these happenings. The men, especially Dan, dismiss all of their fancies as mere fear. At one point, Dan even teases his wife and daughter by playing a practical joke on them. I wonder if this is a true reflection of society: that women and children (Alli is younger) believe in something beyond the reality which they can perceive by their senses, while men only believe in what hard science can "prove." Are churches becoming feminized these days, while the doubting men are staying at home? I don't know, but this seems to be what the film is indirectly suggesting.

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