“Paranormal Activity 2″: Is the thrill ride over?

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 18:30:00 +0000

At least half the fun of watching a movie like "Paranormal Activity 2" is the communal experience -- and in this particular case, let's make that seven-eighths of the fun. I was lucky enough to see this ingenious wrap-around sequel with a late-night New York preview audience that trended both young and rowdy, and the results were instructive.

I can report that "Paranormal Activity 2" includes three terrific shrieks (one of them absolute dynamite), half a dozen good laughs and a lot of shaggy-dog, creepy-atmosphere filler that provoked widespread derision. "I'm bored!" shouted one young man about 15 minutes in, and if he was being slightly unfair, he was nonetheless pointing out that the faintly spooky scene in which nothing really happens is in itself a horror-movie cliché. Later, when suburban housewife Kristi (Sprague Grayden) goes to investigate strange scuffling noises for roughly the seventh time, a guy down the row from me snorted, "These people got a mouse in their house -- and they're scared!"

“[Rec] 2″: The demon-zombie franchise revitalizing horror

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:01:00 +0000

It's time to celebrate one of Spain's greatest cultural achievements on the world stage. Oh, forget that overrated soccer trophy -- I'm talking about the intense, intoxicating "[Rec]" series, from the Spanish directing duo Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, shot entirely as ostensible first-person video (in the "Paranormal Activity"/"Blair Witch" vein) inside a Barcelona apartment building where a mysterious virus has broken out, rendering its denizens into flesh-rending maniacs. With the 2007 sleeper hit "[Rec]" out on DVD, and the even clammier and cleverer "[Rec] 2" now in theaters, it's the perfect moment to catch up on the most energetic new horror franchise in years.

Horror movies have always been about recycling familiar ingredients, whether you consider them clichés or archetypes -- dark houses, supernatural beings, the undead, killer diseases, murderous strangers, teen sexuality and other night terrors. So when horror fans talk about originality, what they really mean is ingenuity, or the even more awkward idea of sincerity. It's not like vampires were some cool new idea when Carl Theodor Dreyer made "Vampyr" in 1932, and it's not as if George A. Romero invented the zombie.

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“Paranormal Activity 2″: Is the thrill ride over?

“[Rec] 2″: The demon-zombie franchise revitalizing horror