Before anyone asks, yes, I waited until the Uncut DVD release to even watch this svcker. Now, I'm a huge fan of the first movie and I think it's one of the greatest examples of the horror genre that has ever been made, so of course I've been looking forward to the second installment with great anticipation.

I went in with low expectations, seeing as the horror genre falls to Sequelitis extremely easily. And unfortunately, I have to say that this movie suffered the very same fate nearly all other sequels do in this genre.

For one, the pacing. It seemed very eager to begin the scares, but it delivered them in tiny, tiny, tiny pieces - so tiny that by about the eighth night, I was thinking to myself "Is something even remotely creepy going to happen?".

It continued on like this for another long chunk of film time. It was past the halfway point before things started to make me pay more attention and draw me into the events. Things started picking up and my pulse was beginning to rise.

But then things started getting...ridiculous. First we've got some old housekeeper who suggests putting olive oil on a cross, the entire house starts freaking out as if there was an earthquake going on...It got relatively creepy again down in the basemant, but then it pulled a Blair Witch out of absolutely nowhere. Cue a cheap jump scare for extra spice. Really? The sequel to a movie that had very few jump scares sure is putting heavy emphasis on them this time (This one in particular is but one of three or four).

The actors didn't do a very convincing job either, IMO. Katie and Micah both displayed disturbingly real and human reactions to what was going on around them. The dialogue and rather bland performances by this cast made me feel like I was watching just another horror film.

And then, as if I wasn't disappointed enough, the ending...that ending! What in the holy mother of [censored] was that?! All I could do was stare slack-jawed, in shock both by what I was watching and by the sheer campy stupidity of it. I just laughed bitterly to myself when the credits started to roll.

By all means, I don't think it was a terrible movie, but this did not live up to the first in any fashion. It didn't come close. Only one scene scared me. One scene instilled the feeling of dread in me that the entirety of the first movie did.

Now, for the discussion part. I'll give my thoughts as to how this could be improved, should a PA3 be planned or is already in the works. For one...please just drop the possession bull[censored]. Please. I know they won't, but damn it, it just ruins the subtlety of everything when you have people screaming like Gollum and attacking family members. I'm sorry, but unless you can do it a little less Exorcist-y, I don't want to see it.

And next, back off on the camera cuts a little. The first movie had one camera, and that's all it needed. This movie kept bouncing back and forth between both the security cameras and hand-held cameras. It's not bad to cut to different ones, but it happened too frequently and too quickly.

Thoughts?

I thought both movies were absolutely terrible.

I haven't seen the second one, but absolutely loved the first. I had a feeling the sequel would go down the route you described (the curse of the sequel lol), but I'll check it out anyway when the DVD is on sale.

Another big issue I had was that it recycled a lot - and I mean a lot - of the same tricks from the first movie. I even predicted some of the outcomes to the night events, and the ending stuck out like a sore thumb just like in the original.

I was really looking forward to seeing how creative they could get with the effects and the setups for this sequel, but so far, this "series" is looking to be a one-trick pony. If a PA3 is made, I hope to god that they try some new things.