Film Filter: Off- Since the fourth one just recently made its debut in theaters, I figured it was about time for me to succumb to the pressure and try watching the series.
Pros- One of the things that is up and coming in the horror biz is the use of music, or sometimes lack thereof. As a found footage genre film, it's pretty clear that this one doesn't utilize music. This oftentimes becomes a pro, as music is usually one of two things in horror movies: foreshadowing something about to happen, or false foreshadowing an event only to result in silence...and THEN the event becomes more effective in the silence. Having no music whatsoever allows the scary moments in the film to be taken as they would naturally happen, as opposed to pumping up a moment with good sound or music.
Not unlike the pros I noted with the original film is the ability to scaffold the intensity and the scary moments within the film. I will say I was a little disappointed with what the moments were, and I didn't find this movie to be all that different from the first one, but they (sort of) utilized a good technique that was exhibited in the original.
This sequel to the original is actually pretty well known to be a prequel. What you don't realize until the end, however, is that it covers both the events before the first movie, and the ones immediately following it as well. As someone who doesn't enjoy loose ends in movies, I found this to be pretty gratifying.
Cons- As I stated above, this movie is really not any different from the original. It layers the events of the haunting in the same way, it even is the same family and demon responsible for the haunting. The only difference is that it adds information that we did not have about the events of Katie and Micah prior to their encounters, and right after as well. While I did say that was gratifying, it was also about 10 minutes of information that could have easily been added to the first one. To include a movie that is almost a carbon copy of an original just to add a parallel perspective of events and 10 minutes worth of new information seems a bit wasteful to me.
Wrap up- This movie wasn't bad, if you look at it on its own, but in conjunction with the original it pretty much felt like a waste of time. I'm assuming that's why the third movie starts to focus on the family at a much older time period. God forbid they tried to use the same one again, as they seem to be running out of ideas...maybe they should make a movie from the dog's perspective.
Why wouldn't they just move?
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good question. My assumption is that, since the demon is focusing on them specifically, it would follow them regardless of their home. There is also a bit of back story in the first one alluding to the fact that this spirit haunted them as children as well, but one would think that their first assumption would be to relocate.
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