A couple of nights ago, our two Austrian students who are staying with us suggested we watch a scary film. After a while of going through different films such as, Scream, Saw, The Strangers, we finally settled on Paranormal Activity 2.
Now normally I'm up for watching any kind of film once to see what it's like, but I'd seen the first Paranormal Activity, and had heard from friends that this film was meant to be even scarier, so naturally I was a bit apprehensive about watching it.
I don't want to say too much about the film and how well it was made, but instead more about its effect on the audience. Throughout the film, you see this small family being plagued increasingly by a demon in their house. The sole reason why this film is as scary as it is, is because the demon is invisible and that you never see it.
With all of the films like Saw, Scream, and The Descent, I'm fine with, because there is a visible person that you can fight back against and see where they are and what they're doing. However when it comes to ghost films, these are the few films that actually get to me, and can freak me out a bit.
I'll try to explain it quickly with this scenario to show how I mean. If you were given the choice would you rather sleep overnight in a house where you know there is an axe murderer hiding in it, or where there is rumoured to be ghosts haunting it. If you choose the first choice, yes it'll be creepy, but you can see and hear him and call the police etc...
However with the second choice, if in the back of your mind you know it could be haunted, then any little noises or movements in the corner of your eyes will make you immediately think ghosts, and will scare you to keep the lights on, even though there could have really been nothing there.
Another reason why this film is so scary is because for a lot of the film, you watch the family through either camcorders that they are using, or through the houses CCTV cameras. Due to seeing the house through these cameras, you have the added feature of a time code in the bottom right hand corner, which occasionally during the night time scenes, will fast forward, and then all of a sudden slow to normal speed. This feature makes it all a lot more scarier because when that time code, goes to normal speed, you can immediately feel your eyes searching every inch of the screen to see if something is moving, or listening out for any noises. By doing this it draws you right in, to the point that your so focused on the screen that even the smallest little movement will make you jump.
Both of these films are really good and a great choice if your in the mood to be spooked. At times it is a bit hard to follow the storyline in them, however most of the time your not really following anyway. Also there has just been released a trailer for the 3rd film which will be coming out sometime in October.
After all my years of watching films, it still amazes me how well films like this do. Why is it that people want to voluntarily pay to get scared??
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