Thoughts on Paranonormal Activity 2.

I second Hard Candy, it was great. And it is a truly suspenseful movie, because it's the only one that not all of my friends fell asleep through. So it can satisfy the lowest of attention spans. Not that a movie should, but it goes to show the suspense is effective lol. Hard Candy I wouldn't say is horror, but more suspense.

If only Ellen Page had stopped after the one movie (Hard Candy) she was in that didn't totally suck (I walked out about 2/3 of the way through Inception, and Whip It was offensive to anybody involved in Roller Derby).
 
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A lot of people on here say that a movie has to have known faces for it be successful with distribution, however is Hard Candy the acception, since Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson were not known at the time and it still became a cult hit?
 
A lot of people on here say that a movie has to have known faces for it be successful with distribution, however is Hard Candy the acception, since Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson were not known at the time and it still became a cult hit?

Ellen Page was hardly a nobody, she had about 8 or 10 movies under her belt, and a recurring role on Trailer Park boys. Not a huge star, but a know quantity for sure.

She is EXACTLY the kind of person a low budget filmmaker would be looking for. You're not gonna ger Cameron Diaz. You can get somebody on their way up, or somebody on their way down.
 
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Oh okay. I asked around and nobody I knew new her before that movie, so I didn't think she would count as a known since only like maybe 10% of moviegoers new. How much percent before you're a known to producers?
 
Oh okay. I asked around and nobody I knew new her before that movie, so I didn't think she would count as a known since only like maybe 10% of moviegoers new. How much percent before you're a known to producers?

Around 36.5%. Please stop with the incredibly specific and impossible to answer questions :no:

Some great advice from Gonzo though. Just because you can't get a huge star doesn't mean you can't find actors that are talented and bring a lot to a production.
 
Primer and Pi were also two movies that were small to medium hits and did have huge stars. But I degress I guess we are suppose to be talking about PA 2 on this thread.
 
Primer and Pi were also two movies that were small to medium hits and did have huge stars. But I degress I guess we are suppose to be talking about PA 2 on this thread.

Ummm, what are you talking about? Granted Pi had a name in Mark Margolis, though I would hardly call it a film that featured his character and I doubt that the money that this film made was through his name.

And Primer did not have any huge stars that I recall; it was just a good, smart, though-provoking film.

But, I digress and end up talking about a point that has nothing to do with the title of the thread...
 
I liked the first one.

To me it was very atmospheric. It built up the suspense, subtlety increasing the danger and horror until there was a KABOOM! moment. It never let up with this process of rising tension, creepiness, and terror, right up until the end.

The second one, however, was simply all over the place. It wasn't spooky like the first one, possibly because I knew what to expect. The characters and setup also just rang false to me whereas the first one felt a lot more natural and believable. The tension between the characters also just didn't work for me in the second one, possibly because there were too many characters. The first one kept things simple with just two primary characters and I think because of that, there was a clarity of vision that was translated to the audience, whereas with the second one I felt it was really muddied and confused.
 
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