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grrgoylThis was the second weekend for The Mixed Signals Gang. Gerry pushed mightily for a return to the Lair, but Ter and I had our hearts set on my beloved Audubon Loop. Tery did okay at the Lair (apart from the falling and flat tire), but she suffered a bit of PTSD afterwards and I felt she should probably try somewhere a little tamer until she was more used to her bike (nicknamed "The Gray Ghost" nee "Silver Fox").
Just as we pulled into the parking lot, a storm cloud made good on its threat and broke, spattering us with a few raindrops. Families were literally fleeing the trail in terror. But, and this is why I love Colorado, it was done by the time we saddled up and headed into the woods, leaving behind a lovely breezy sunlit fall afternoon.
The ride was fairly uneventful, only exciting to me because we found a different path to loop back on which opened up a whole new unexplored route. Tery did okay (I suppose; she stayed far behind us so she didn't feel any pressure from being watched), though wasn't awfully keen on the trail back as it involved climbing some smallish hills and rocketing down the other side. Downhill still kind of terrifies her (as it did me when I first started out. Then one day it just sort of clicked and now I live for it).
Some pictures:
Sporty and Sassy Ter. You can see the storm front retreating in the face of our bold determination to enjoy the day
Action shot of Ger. He got some air off that tiny root in the path. So manly!
Me and Rojo
I kind of like this carefree one taken without my knowledge, and since it's my blog I get to appear twice
~*~
Monday was absolutely gorgeous, 80 degrees. I couldn't wait to get out, even just to go around the park. But first I had to bring a large torchiere lamp to donate to Goodwill. It was heavy, but not extraordinarily so. I was walking out to my car with it when I felt a sudden twinge in my back that almost made me double over. It hurt so much that it pretty much killed any bike plans. Stuck inside on possibly the last really nice day of the season (though who knows...fingers crossed for global warming); I was PISSED.
So I made the most of it by watching some movies:
Clash of the Titans (2010): I've always been a huge mythology buff, specializing in Greek -- even made an illustrated dictionary for a class assignment (lost long ago now to the vagrancy of time and moving out of my parents' house). I loved the original "Clash" growing up. I actually rewatched it just a few weeks ago in preparation for seeing this version.
Unfortunately comparisons are inescapable. I almost wish I didn't have the original to color my opinion of this one, because I honestly can't decide if it's a good movie on its own merits or not.
Certainly the effects are better. Poor Ray Harryhausen, doing his best with the primitive technology of the day, couldn't hold a candle to the sophisticated CGI at work here. Some of his shots that combined live action with stop motion creatures looked like a really bad Photoshop job. But they were groundbreaking at the time.
But do better effects mean a better story? I don't think so. Since this is a retelling of the first movie, it brings almost nothing new to the table, and I don't know if there were plot holes I was filling in from memory or they were my imagination.
What was new in this one was unfortunately just a product of taking all the key elements from the first, mixing them up in a barrel and throwing them back together.
Let's start with Sam Worthington. He apparently is only capable of two accents, American and Australian. Consequently, his Perseus traipsing around Argos with an Aussie dialect is a little like Gerard Butler's Leonidas prancing around Sparta with a Scottish -- distracting and a little annoying. And, might I add, he's way more attractive as a Na'vi.
Liam Neeson was okay as Zeus, except he looks like he totally had eye work done. Ralph Fiennes was perfectly sepulchral as Hades, and had more screen time in this movie than he's had in six Harry Potter films as Voldemort (AND got to keep his nose, so, bonus!). Pete Postlethwaite (who again dies tragically early in this film) needs to eat a sandwich or something: His enormous bulbous head looks like it's been photoshopped (badly) onto his scrawny wasted body.
Alright, in case there's someone left out there who still doesn't know the story of either film (that's a bit of fun there; this isn't exactly the Twilight franchise), essentially mankind rebels against the gods, angering them so much that they give an ultimatum: sacrifice the princess Andromeda to the Kraken or it will destroy Argos. The Kraken is a huge beastie that's imprisoned in the ocean, the last of the Titans (the race that came before the gods). Perseus, son of Zeus and a mortal woman, is enlisted to do some big damn heroics and save the day.
Here's where the first of the "shake it up a little so it isn't just the same damn movie with nicer visuals" came into play and annoyed me. The Kraken in this version is Hades' pet; in the original it was Poseidon's, which, given that it lives in the ocean, makes a hell of a lot more sense. A small thing, but I really can't see any reason to change it unless you just want to shake it up a little, yadda yadda yadda.
Pegasus is black (kind of liked that), but rather than capturing and taming him like Harry Hamlin had to do, Sam just walks up and talks nice to him, but whatevs -- it ultimately doesn't even matter since he vanishes soon after for the rest of the film, before conveniently reappearing at the end as a lazy deus ex machina device.
Which brings me to my second quibble: in the first movie, to some extent, Perseus had things handed to him by his father Zeus to help his quest, but they did it in such a way that it didn't seem like he was doing NOTHING and breezing by; which is exactly the feeling I got from this Perseus. Just like Jake Sully in Avatar, Sam's Perseus just has to decide to do something and it's done, effortlessly, and he hardly breaks a sweat. This is not terribly exciting for the viewer.
One of the biggest disappointments is the reduction of the role of the character Calibos. He was the best part of the original. He's the primary villain, a mortal man cursed and deformed by the gods for his cruel and wicked nature, making him as ugly on the outside as in. He's in love with Andromeda, but since she can't love him back he forces her suitors to answer a riddle, killing them gruesomely when they're wrong.
All of this has been excised from the new version. He's in there, but inexplicably created instead from an existing character (King Acrisius, husband to Perseus's mother before Zeus tricked her into bed). He pops up occasionally to create trouble for Perseus's group, but has really been rendered so unimportant you have to wonder why they bothered at all.
Don't even get me started on Bubo, the mechanical owl that is Perseus's most valuable companion in the first -- in this version, he's pulled out of a dusty chest (and it's even the same prop from the original), someone asks, "What's this?" and they're told to forget about it. It was so hammy they might as well have turned and winked at the camera, and I'm sure left many people who missed the original thinking, "WTF???"
I thought it was cool when they journeyed into Hades and met Charon the Ferryman, until realizing they were going there to fight Medusa, which makes absolutely no sense at ALL: if Medusa was hanging out in the underworld, why is her temple littered with warriors she's turned to stone? Presumably they were already dead if they were down there, so why would they bother fighting her? And did that mean they died twice?
Stupidity resulting from changing things just for the sake of changing them, not in the interest of making them better.
Because B.) How could they even enter the realm of the god they're seeking to defeat looking for a weapon against him? These gods are pretty on the ball -- the slightest misspoken word on earth results in them appearing instantly and smiting first, asking questions later. Hard to believe an entire party of soldiers can sneak into Hades' kingdom without him noticing.
Hang on...I just realized an enormous flaw. Perseus kills Medusa, gets her head (SPOILER), but he's running out of time to get back to Argos (a 4-day journey, as they state repeatedly). Cue Pegasus, a super speedy mode of transportation, appearing serendipitously at just that second. But how did Pegasus get into the underworld???!?!?! And don't tell me Zeus brought him, because Zeus may be the king of the gods, but he still had to respect his brothers' territories.
That's it. This movie is just dead to me. Flashier effects to be sure, but shallow, nonsensical plot line. Give me back Harryhausen's photoshop job.
Second, Paranormal Activity 2: I thought I liked the first one, but then realized it doesn't stand up at all to repeat viewings. Yet another movie that became a victim of its own hype.
I went into this sequel (or prequel) with almost no expectations, and I wasn't disappointed. Nor was I pleasantly surprised.
This movie follows Katie's sister and takes place a few short weeks before the first movie. The opening scene is her bringing home newborn Hunter from the hospital. Then it's either a few years later or Hunter has accelerated development like a demon child, because he's suddenly walking in the next scene (srsly. I spent ten minutes looking for the baby before realizing he was the toddler).
Anyway, the third scene is the family finding their home ransacked, with nothing actually having been stolen. Demonic activity or a convenient excuse to install security cameras everywhere so we don't have to follow one character carrying a camera around? Probably both.
The camera jockey from the first movie, Micah, is thankfully mercifully almost absent in this one. He shows up once or twice to ooh and aah, not over the new baby, but over Kristi's husband's fancy HD camera. Go away, Micah.
Speaking of Daniel (the husband), he's almost as absent as Micah, with less of an excuse. He's either always at work or I guess sleeping, leaving Kristi to take care of baby Hunter practically singlehandedly. Nice.
Well, she has Martine, a superstitious Latina nanny who is the only one smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge when things start getting weird; Ali, her step-daughter, who is the only one concerned enough to do internet research when things start getting weird; and Abby, the German shepherd, who we'll see leaves quite a bit to be desired as a guard dog.
The first twenty minutes of the movie are even more boring than the first twenty minutes of #1. Just a lot of cycling through all six security cameras at night while absolutely nothing happens. Even during the day we just watch Kristi puttering around the house, leading me to the conclusion that reality TV wouldn't be as popular as it is without all the manufactured drama and immature bickering its usually characterized by.
The most mysterious event is how every morning the self-propelled pool vacuum is up on the deck after motoring around in the water all night like its supposed to. I thought this was strange, but no one else says anything about it until like night 6 or something.
The mystery seems to be solved by a quick clip of Abby pawing at it playfully, so I thought the dog was pulling it out. But Daniel finally indulges his wife and views the footage, revealing a clear shot of it hitting the side of the pool and crawling up and out onto the concrete on its own (pretty sure they aren't supposed to do that). Sadly, this was honestly the creepiest moment in the whole movie for me.
Then things start happening inside the house. Like pans falling off the rack on their own, and Abby barking and snarling at something just off-screen in Hunter's room. Kristi is becoming unsettled, but strangely no one ever bothers looking at the security tapes. Come on, you're home alone all day with a 2-year-old. Quit watching YouTube and find some time to investigate if your house is haunted.
But this is what I'm talking about that Abby is a piss-poor guard dog: At my hospital, sometimes all I do is sneeze and the dogs go ape shit. In this movie, pans falling, strange disembodied footsteps at night, and its like they don't even own a dog. Abby, YOU'RE FIRED.
Somewhere in here Aunt Katie comes over and Kristi confides in her that something is going on. They both remember their childhood when Katie would see something standing at the foot of their bed. Katie's advice is to just not talk about it, which makes her a big old hypocrite in the first movie when that's all she does.
Ali continues her online sleuthing and reads that if someone makes a deal with the devil for wealth, fortune or power and fails to deliver payment, the devil will come for the firstborn male child, which Hunter just happens to be in Kristi's family. Coincidence? ALI THINKS NOT.
Blah, blah, blah, a whole lot of nothing happens. Until Ali is left to babysit Hunter one night. She gets locked out of the house by unseen forces. While she tries to find a way back in (never going so far as to, you know, break a window, which I think would be a forgivable action considering there's a toddler inside), Hunter gets pulled out of his crib by unseen forces; he starts off sliding across the mattress pad, then up the rails (which unfortunately looked so much like the pool vacuum escaping that I LOLed). He's deposited on the floor and wanders around the house for a few minutes, before suddenly being found back in his crib when his parents return home.
They don't believe Ali's protests about being locked out against her will. She tracks down the footage showing how it happened (FINALLY someone remembered they had cameras installed), but stops before seeing Hunter skidding around like an air hockey puck. HONESTLY PEOPLE.
Then one night Abby fulfills her duty as a guard dog, attacking something off-screen, only to be pulled off violently and hurt somehow -- thankfully we're shown only bloody paw prints and Daniel carrying her limp body off to the vet. Kristi is left alone with Hunter. Hours go by uneventfully, until suddenly Hunter starts crying. Kristi goes to check on him, and is dragged down the stairs by unseen forces (just like Katie) into the basement. She emerges hours later and isn't acting right, just like Katie.
In fact, she holes up in Hunter's room and won't let anyone near him. She sits motionless but becomes feral if anyone comes in. Daniel and Ali discuss somehow transferring the demon (not sure how they arrive at the demon conclusion, there's been almost no interaction between any family members to this point) to Aunt Katie -- she doesn't have a kid, so there's nothing remotely unethical about that idea. Goddamn breeders think they're the center of the whole fucking universe.
The climax of the movie is when the home's power is knocked out by unseen forces and Daniel is forced to grope around in the dark using the night vision on his video camera -- a device that is used far more effectively in movies such as Quarantine,28 Weeks Later and of course The Descent.
Following ten minutes of confused fumbling in the basement, which has crap stacked to the ceiling like a hoarder house, Daniel is knocked down by something, Hunter's feet are wandering around in front of the camera, and we have NO idea what's going on. I dimly remember a scene of Katie shuffling in on Kristi (or maybe the other way around) and someone being flung at the camera -- just like in the first movie. This demon is a one-trick pony, I'm telling you.
Then we cut to the opening scene of the first movie, and the viewer briefly wonders in horror if they'll be subjected to watching that atrocity a second time. Thankfully we aren't, but still; this prequel doesn't work very well if only because the first movie makes absolutely no reference to it. They're supposedly separated by like six weeks, yet Katie never mentioned the tragic deaths of her sister and husband, or how eerily similar the phenomena she is experiencing is to what Kristi was babbling about shortly before her tragic death. If you're going to set up a prequel, don't fill it with earth-shatteringly disturbing events that were ignored in your first script. I don't know where that leaves you, but that's why I'm a snarky movie reviewer and not a screenwriter.
The best thing I can say about this movie is I didn't pay to see it (thank you, torrents). And I want some of whatever![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kavieshana was smoking when she said it was as enjoyable as the first (which I guess technically is true, though not necessarily a positive). Sorry, babe.
Just as we pulled into the parking lot, a storm cloud made good on its threat and broke, spattering us with a few raindrops. Families were literally fleeing the trail in terror. But, and this is why I love Colorado, it was done by the time we saddled up and headed into the woods, leaving behind a lovely breezy sunlit fall afternoon.
The ride was fairly uneventful, only exciting to me because we found a different path to loop back on which opened up a whole new unexplored route. Tery did okay (I suppose; she stayed far behind us so she didn't feel any pressure from being watched), though wasn't awfully keen on the trail back as it involved climbing some smallish hills and rocketing down the other side. Downhill still kind of terrifies her (as it did me when I first started out. Then one day it just sort of clicked and now I live for it).
Some pictures:
Sporty and Sassy Ter. You can see the storm front retreating in the face of our bold determination to enjoy the day
Action shot of Ger. He got some air off that tiny root in the path. So manly!
Me and Rojo
I kind of like this carefree one taken without my knowledge, and since it's my blog I get to appear twice
~*~
Monday was absolutely gorgeous, 80 degrees. I couldn't wait to get out, even just to go around the park. But first I had to bring a large torchiere lamp to donate to Goodwill. It was heavy, but not extraordinarily so. I was walking out to my car with it when I felt a sudden twinge in my back that almost made me double over. It hurt so much that it pretty much killed any bike plans. Stuck inside on possibly the last really nice day of the season (though who knows...fingers crossed for global warming); I was PISSED.
So I made the most of it by watching some movies:
Clash of the Titans (2010): I've always been a huge mythology buff, specializing in Greek -- even made an illustrated dictionary for a class assignment (lost long ago now to the vagrancy of time and moving out of my parents' house). I loved the original "Clash" growing up. I actually rewatched it just a few weeks ago in preparation for seeing this version.
Unfortunately comparisons are inescapable. I almost wish I didn't have the original to color my opinion of this one, because I honestly can't decide if it's a good movie on its own merits or not.
Certainly the effects are better. Poor Ray Harryhausen, doing his best with the primitive technology of the day, couldn't hold a candle to the sophisticated CGI at work here. Some of his shots that combined live action with stop motion creatures looked like a really bad Photoshop job. But they were groundbreaking at the time.
But do better effects mean a better story? I don't think so. Since this is a retelling of the first movie, it brings almost nothing new to the table, and I don't know if there were plot holes I was filling in from memory or they were my imagination.
What was new in this one was unfortunately just a product of taking all the key elements from the first, mixing them up in a barrel and throwing them back together.
Let's start with Sam Worthington. He apparently is only capable of two accents, American and Australian. Consequently, his Perseus traipsing around Argos with an Aussie dialect is a little like Gerard Butler's Leonidas prancing around Sparta with a Scottish -- distracting and a little annoying. And, might I add, he's way more attractive as a Na'vi.
Liam Neeson was okay as Zeus, except he looks like he totally had eye work done. Ralph Fiennes was perfectly sepulchral as Hades, and had more screen time in this movie than he's had in six Harry Potter films as Voldemort (AND got to keep his nose, so, bonus!). Pete Postlethwaite (who again dies tragically early in this film) needs to eat a sandwich or something: His enormous bulbous head looks like it's been photoshopped (badly) onto his scrawny wasted body.
Alright, in case there's someone left out there who still doesn't know the story of either film (that's a bit of fun there; this isn't exactly the Twilight franchise), essentially mankind rebels against the gods, angering them so much that they give an ultimatum: sacrifice the princess Andromeda to the Kraken or it will destroy Argos. The Kraken is a huge beastie that's imprisoned in the ocean, the last of the Titans (the race that came before the gods). Perseus, son of Zeus and a mortal woman, is enlisted to do some big damn heroics and save the day.
Here's where the first of the "shake it up a little so it isn't just the same damn movie with nicer visuals" came into play and annoyed me. The Kraken in this version is Hades' pet; in the original it was Poseidon's, which, given that it lives in the ocean, makes a hell of a lot more sense. A small thing, but I really can't see any reason to change it unless you just want to shake it up a little, yadda yadda yadda.
Pegasus is black (kind of liked that), but rather than capturing and taming him like Harry Hamlin had to do, Sam just walks up and talks nice to him, but whatevs -- it ultimately doesn't even matter since he vanishes soon after for the rest of the film, before conveniently reappearing at the end as a lazy deus ex machina device.
Which brings me to my second quibble: in the first movie, to some extent, Perseus had things handed to him by his father Zeus to help his quest, but they did it in such a way that it didn't seem like he was doing NOTHING and breezing by; which is exactly the feeling I got from this Perseus. Just like Jake Sully in Avatar, Sam's Perseus just has to decide to do something and it's done, effortlessly, and he hardly breaks a sweat. This is not terribly exciting for the viewer.
One of the biggest disappointments is the reduction of the role of the character Calibos. He was the best part of the original. He's the primary villain, a mortal man cursed and deformed by the gods for his cruel and wicked nature, making him as ugly on the outside as in. He's in love with Andromeda, but since she can't love him back he forces her suitors to answer a riddle, killing them gruesomely when they're wrong.
All of this has been excised from the new version. He's in there, but inexplicably created instead from an existing character (King Acrisius, husband to Perseus's mother before Zeus tricked her into bed). He pops up occasionally to create trouble for Perseus's group, but has really been rendered so unimportant you have to wonder why they bothered at all.
Don't even get me started on Bubo, the mechanical owl that is Perseus's most valuable companion in the first -- in this version, he's pulled out of a dusty chest (and it's even the same prop from the original), someone asks, "What's this?" and they're told to forget about it. It was so hammy they might as well have turned and winked at the camera, and I'm sure left many people who missed the original thinking, "WTF???"
I thought it was cool when they journeyed into Hades and met Charon the Ferryman, until realizing they were going there to fight Medusa, which makes absolutely no sense at ALL: if Medusa was hanging out in the underworld, why is her temple littered with warriors she's turned to stone? Presumably they were already dead if they were down there, so why would they bother fighting her? And did that mean they died twice?
Stupidity resulting from changing things just for the sake of changing them, not in the interest of making them better.
Because B.) How could they even enter the realm of the god they're seeking to defeat looking for a weapon against him? These gods are pretty on the ball -- the slightest misspoken word on earth results in them appearing instantly and smiting first, asking questions later. Hard to believe an entire party of soldiers can sneak into Hades' kingdom without him noticing.
Hang on...I just realized an enormous flaw. Perseus kills Medusa, gets her head (SPOILER), but he's running out of time to get back to Argos (a 4-day journey, as they state repeatedly). Cue Pegasus, a super speedy mode of transportation, appearing serendipitously at just that second. But how did Pegasus get into the underworld???!?!?! And don't tell me Zeus brought him, because Zeus may be the king of the gods, but he still had to respect his brothers' territories.
That's it. This movie is just dead to me. Flashier effects to be sure, but shallow, nonsensical plot line. Give me back Harryhausen's photoshop job.
Second, Paranormal Activity 2: I thought I liked the first one, but then realized it doesn't stand up at all to repeat viewings. Yet another movie that became a victim of its own hype.
I went into this sequel (or prequel) with almost no expectations, and I wasn't disappointed. Nor was I pleasantly surprised.
This movie follows Katie's sister and takes place a few short weeks before the first movie. The opening scene is her bringing home newborn Hunter from the hospital. Then it's either a few years later or Hunter has accelerated development like a demon child, because he's suddenly walking in the next scene (srsly. I spent ten minutes looking for the baby before realizing he was the toddler).
Anyway, the third scene is the family finding their home ransacked, with nothing actually having been stolen. Demonic activity or a convenient excuse to install security cameras everywhere so we don't have to follow one character carrying a camera around? Probably both.
The camera jockey from the first movie, Micah, is thankfully mercifully almost absent in this one. He shows up once or twice to ooh and aah, not over the new baby, but over Kristi's husband's fancy HD camera. Go away, Micah.
Speaking of Daniel (the husband), he's almost as absent as Micah, with less of an excuse. He's either always at work or I guess sleeping, leaving Kristi to take care of baby Hunter practically singlehandedly. Nice.
Well, she has Martine, a superstitious Latina nanny who is the only one smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge when things start getting weird; Ali, her step-daughter, who is the only one concerned enough to do internet research when things start getting weird; and Abby, the German shepherd, who we'll see leaves quite a bit to be desired as a guard dog.
The first twenty minutes of the movie are even more boring than the first twenty minutes of #1. Just a lot of cycling through all six security cameras at night while absolutely nothing happens. Even during the day we just watch Kristi puttering around the house, leading me to the conclusion that reality TV wouldn't be as popular as it is without all the manufactured drama and immature bickering its usually characterized by.
The most mysterious event is how every morning the self-propelled pool vacuum is up on the deck after motoring around in the water all night like its supposed to. I thought this was strange, but no one else says anything about it until like night 6 or something.
The mystery seems to be solved by a quick clip of Abby pawing at it playfully, so I thought the dog was pulling it out. But Daniel finally indulges his wife and views the footage, revealing a clear shot of it hitting the side of the pool and crawling up and out onto the concrete on its own (pretty sure they aren't supposed to do that). Sadly, this was honestly the creepiest moment in the whole movie for me.
Then things start happening inside the house. Like pans falling off the rack on their own, and Abby barking and snarling at something just off-screen in Hunter's room. Kristi is becoming unsettled, but strangely no one ever bothers looking at the security tapes. Come on, you're home alone all day with a 2-year-old. Quit watching YouTube and find some time to investigate if your house is haunted.
But this is what I'm talking about that Abby is a piss-poor guard dog: At my hospital, sometimes all I do is sneeze and the dogs go ape shit. In this movie, pans falling, strange disembodied footsteps at night, and its like they don't even own a dog. Abby, YOU'RE FIRED.
Somewhere in here Aunt Katie comes over and Kristi confides in her that something is going on. They both remember their childhood when Katie would see something standing at the foot of their bed. Katie's advice is to just not talk about it, which makes her a big old hypocrite in the first movie when that's all she does.
Ali continues her online sleuthing and reads that if someone makes a deal with the devil for wealth, fortune or power and fails to deliver payment, the devil will come for the firstborn male child, which Hunter just happens to be in Kristi's family. Coincidence? ALI THINKS NOT.
Blah, blah, blah, a whole lot of nothing happens. Until Ali is left to babysit Hunter one night. She gets locked out of the house by unseen forces. While she tries to find a way back in (never going so far as to, you know, break a window, which I think would be a forgivable action considering there's a toddler inside), Hunter gets pulled out of his crib by unseen forces; he starts off sliding across the mattress pad, then up the rails (which unfortunately looked so much like the pool vacuum escaping that I LOLed). He's deposited on the floor and wanders around the house for a few minutes, before suddenly being found back in his crib when his parents return home.
They don't believe Ali's protests about being locked out against her will. She tracks down the footage showing how it happened (FINALLY someone remembered they had cameras installed), but stops before seeing Hunter skidding around like an air hockey puck. HONESTLY PEOPLE.
Then one night Abby fulfills her duty as a guard dog, attacking something off-screen, only to be pulled off violently and hurt somehow -- thankfully we're shown only bloody paw prints and Daniel carrying her limp body off to the vet. Kristi is left alone with Hunter. Hours go by uneventfully, until suddenly Hunter starts crying. Kristi goes to check on him, and is dragged down the stairs by unseen forces (just like Katie) into the basement. She emerges hours later and isn't acting right, just like Katie.
In fact, she holes up in Hunter's room and won't let anyone near him. She sits motionless but becomes feral if anyone comes in. Daniel and Ali discuss somehow transferring the demon (not sure how they arrive at the demon conclusion, there's been almost no interaction between any family members to this point) to Aunt Katie -- she doesn't have a kid, so there's nothing remotely unethical about that idea. Goddamn breeders think they're the center of the whole fucking universe.
The climax of the movie is when the home's power is knocked out by unseen forces and Daniel is forced to grope around in the dark using the night vision on his video camera -- a device that is used far more effectively in movies such as Quarantine,28 Weeks Later and of course The Descent.
Following ten minutes of confused fumbling in the basement, which has crap stacked to the ceiling like a hoarder house, Daniel is knocked down by something, Hunter's feet are wandering around in front of the camera, and we have NO idea what's going on. I dimly remember a scene of Katie shuffling in on Kristi (or maybe the other way around) and someone being flung at the camera -- just like in the first movie. This demon is a one-trick pony, I'm telling you.
Then we cut to the opening scene of the first movie, and the viewer briefly wonders in horror if they'll be subjected to watching that atrocity a second time. Thankfully we aren't, but still; this prequel doesn't work very well if only because the first movie makes absolutely no reference to it. They're supposedly separated by like six weeks, yet Katie never mentioned the tragic deaths of her sister and husband, or how eerily similar the phenomena she is experiencing is to what Kristi was babbling about shortly before her tragic death. If you're going to set up a prequel, don't fill it with earth-shatteringly disturbing events that were ignored in your first script. I don't know where that leaves you, but that's why I'm a snarky movie reviewer and not a screenwriter.
The best thing I can say about this movie is I didn't pay to see it (thank you, torrents). And I want some of whatever
kavieshana was smoking when she said it was as enjoyable as the first (which I guess technically is true, though not necessarily a positive). Sorry, babe.