I recently watched the first Paranormal Activity with my twelve-year-old son. It was his first time watching it, my second. I thought it was scary and creepy and ominous, filled with a sense of impending dread and doom that was effective and real and very hard to shake. I know a lot of people hated it, and have gotten totally sick of the “found footage” handheld camera movies. But if they’re done well (and I would argue that these two are), I can find plenty of enjoyment in them.

The second one is much the same as the first, with doors opening by themselves, strange noises in the night, etc. There are a couple of really jolting scares that up the ante from the first movie, but I won’t ruin them for those of you who might not have seen it yet.

I love watching scary movies with my kid! He got out a blanket and kept pulling it up toward his face when the movie got scary. He also told me I needed to scoot closer to him and snuggle. Win for me!

(We have a large home theater in the basement with a 104-inch diagonal front projection system and a very high end sound system, so movies look and sound fabulous, but more than that, you have to watch them in the dark or the lights wash out the image. Which means scary movies can be even more scary since you can’t turn on the lights.)

I’m not going to bother with the details of the movie, except to say that it dovetails nicely with the first one. I also liked that they created a backstory/mythology for what was going on that provided just enough of an explanation to keep things interesting and fresh. The use of multiple security camera footage, in addition to camcorder footage, was another nice touch.

Halloween is coming soon. Treat yourself to a spookfest and check out both Paranormal flicks, just in time for the third!