This film both precedes, overlaps with, and follows the events of the first Paranormal Activity movie. This one also breaks the habit of having the characters share the first name as the respective actors besides Katie and Micah of course.
In this picture, we meet Katie's sister Kristi Rey (played by Sprague Grayden), Kristi's husband Daniel Rey (played by Brian Boland) and Daniel's daughter teenage daughter Ali (played by Molly Ephraim). The family has a housekeeper/nanny named Martine (played by Vivis Colombetti) who lives at the house with them.
At the start of the film, Kristi has just given birth to a baby boy named Hunter (played by William Juan Prieto and Jackson Xenia Prieto). For some reason Daniel Rey starts off somehow more obnoxious and douche baggy than Micah. It's almost like the actor and/or writers decided "Let's make Micah look like a saint compared to this a-hole!" Micah at least had a sort of "two-second let's give this guy a chance" situation whereas Daniel just hit the ground running as a dick.
Anyway, so after bringing the baby home we fast forward until Hunter is a toddler. There is what appears to be a break-in (at least that's what Daniel calls it). It's a little strange to me that they continue to call this a "break-in" when they quickly figure out that almost nothing was stolen and that there was just vandalism essentially. Daniel's reaction is to install survelliance cameras but not an alarm system as well as cameras.
After the cameras are installed nothing very strange happens except the pool cleaner machine keeps coming out of the pool at night. No one ever notices this happening and Daniel doesn't seem to think that it's strange that he keeps having to put the pool cleaner back into the pool every morning. At worst it's a bit of a prank and considering his "delightful" behavior, you'd think that he would complain and find out who is taking the pool cleaner out.
Eventually "spooky" things start happening including the pool cleaner coming out of the pool, sounds being heard, toys being played with, a high chair falling over, etc. Martine seems to be aware of supernatural things in general and quickly tries to help protect the family.
Daniel, the genius (sarcasm!), doesn't seem to realize that her efforts at smudging the house with sage are meant as a protective gesture. Instead he way overreacts and fires Martine.
Never mind that Martine is an established and beloved housekeeper that he has known and trusted for years. Never mind that she has been taking care of his young son all of this time without incident. One instance of her smudging and she's out the door. It's odd also because he makes it sound like she does this sort of thing all the time when it is obvious based off of the previous boring footage that we have seen that she hasn't done this thing before.
Ali is upset by the business of Martine being fired but Kristi doesn't seem to give a crap. I guess for her it doesn't count that this woman has been tending to her child while Kristi does something that we never see. She never mentions work and we never see her go to work. It is certainly a mystery as to why this not busy stay at home housewife needs a nanny. She doesn't even give the excuse of having to go to the salon or being involved in charities or volunteer work.
After Martine leaves, the demon starts acting out in earnest. We have a chandelier swinging scene and Ali stupidly gets locked out of the house. I say stupidly because if you are watching a small child by yourself and you hear a knock late at night, you peek through the peephole. If you don't see anyone, you don't open the door and you certainly don't walk outside to see what's up.
Despite Ali's protestations and the viewing of the footage, Daniel decides that Ali was locked out by the wind because the wind is known to turn locks when it slams doors behind people. We catch up with Katie and Micah throughout all of this foolishness.
The most interesting thing that comes of that is we hear mysterious references to a specific series of events that happened during Katie and Kristi's childhood. Katie shuts down the conversation leaving the audience to speculate until the third Paranormal Activity movie comes out.
Spooky things keep happening including an excellent jump scare moment with Kristi in the kitchen. That moment certainly was a step up from the "scares" in the first movie leaving some of us in the audience wondering how they were going to top this one. The climax of the movie happens when the family dog is injured by the demon leaving Kristi home alone with Hunter. No one thinks to review the footage at a later time to figure out what happened to the dog. Further, when Kristi starts acting strange, no one initially takes the time to review the footage to see what might have led up to Kristi's unusual behavior. For a family that supposedly cares, they don't seem to care that much about each other since they won't review footage to see what happened. Then we have the tie in to the first movie (which is where my heaviest criticism for Daniel stems from).
All in all, a good sequel to the first movie. It adds to the story of the first movie and sets up the story for the third movie. Also this movie features the first of night vision scenes that audiences would grow accustomed to as the franchise progressed.
A nit-picking complaint that I have with this movie is that this house is exceptionally clean considering they have a toddler, an indoor dog, and a teenager living in this house. What makes the cleanliness most puzzling is we have mom that is "so busy" doing whatever it is that she does that she can't even be bothered to look after her own son by herself much less clean the house. Maybe the demon is cleaning the house?
The "reason" for the haunting didn't make a lot of sense to me. The idea that there was literally a deal with the devil for riches maybe in exchange for the first born son of this family didn't follow as A) the family wasn't rich and B) what is a demon going to do with a baby anyway? There is no mention of actual sacrificing. The demon just seems to want a baby boy but why?
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