Editorials
‘Paranormal Activity 2’ Brilliantly Turned a Simple Story into a Compelling Franchise
It’s often not the first film that launches a franchise, but rather its sequel.
Director Oren Peli will be the first one to tell you that he never planned on Paranormal Activity being anything more than a one-shot film. His low-budget debut feature, filmed in his own home, told a contained story with a definite beginning, middle and end. In short, a young man and woman, Micah and Katie, realize that something strange is going on inside their home while they sleep, so they decide to start filming their bedroom after they turn the lights out each night. A demonic entity eventually presents itself, possessing Katie.
A possessed Katie kills Micah. A police officer arrives, shooting and killing Katie. At least, this was the ending to the film when it initially premiered back in 2007.
As is now common knowledge, Paramount eventually acquired Peli’s little movie, releasing it into theaters across the country in 2009. Much to Peli’s initial chagrin, Paramount shot an entirely new ending for the film, designed to allow room for sequels. In the theatrical ending, Katie doesn’t get shot by the cops after killing Micah.
Instead, she vanishes.
After the smash hit success of Paranormal Activity, Paramount’s desired sequel wasn’t far behind. Peli remained on board as producer of Paranormal Activity 2, released in 2010. This time, the script was penned by Christopher Landon, Michael Perry and Tom Pabst, and Tod Williams took over as director of the found footage franchise’s second outing.
Initially unbeknownst to the audience, the multi-camera Paranormal Activity 2 centers on the family of Kristi, briefly referenced in the first film as being Katie’s sister. Surprisingly, Katie pops up at a certain point, cluing us into the fact that this sequel is actually (for the most part) a prequel to Paranormal Activity. Katie isn’t yet possessed and Micah is still alive, but Kristi and her family are experiencing the sort of strange, terrifying activity that Katie and Micah soon will.
If the first sequel makes or breaks a franchise, Paranormal Activity 2 most definitely accomplished the goal of “making” this one. The first film established no real mythology for a potential franchise beyond Katie and her sister having experienced *something* as children, and the sequel uses that limited backstory from Peli’s film as the jumping off point to expand upon the story and deepen the mythology in some very interesting ways.
Why was Katie being targeted in the first film? And what was with that burnt childhood photo in her attic? Paranormal Activity 2 provides compelling answers to these questions.
We learn in Paranormal Activity 2 that a distant relative of Katie and Kristi’s family made some kind of deal with a demon decades prior to 2006, under the clause that the demon would eventually collect the firstborn male in the family tree. As it turns out, Kristi’s young son Hunter is that firstborn male, making her and her family the initial target of the demon. And here’s where things get really crazy, and wonderfully mean-spirited.
In a shocking twist that manages to make the original Paranormal Activity an even better, creepier and more interesting film upon a revisit, we learn in the sequel that it was actually Kristi’s lovable husband Daniel who was responsible for Katie being tormented in Peli’s movie! Desperate and fearing for the life of his wife, young son and teenage daughter, Daniel resorts to extreme measures, transferring the demon from his wife’s body into her sister’s home! It’s the family’s housekeeper who tells him how to do this, and the process involves burning a photo of the new host (which must be a blood relative) and placing it inside that person’s home.
Does that mean the noises Katie and Micah heard on the first of their nightmare nights were actually Daniel breaking in and spreading the curse? Chilling to think about.
Paranormal Activity 2 is also loaded with other fun little treats for fans of the first film, cluing us into why Micah wanted to buy a camera in the first place – he was impressed with Daniel’s, remarking that he needed to get one – and even showing us the likely origins of the Ouija Board Micah uses in the first film. He tells Katie in Paranormal Activity that he had borrowed it, and that same board’s appearance in the sequel suggests that it was Daniel who lent it to him. Of course, that only helped Daniel’s insidious cause.
Ultimately, Paranormal Activity 2 catches up to the events of the first film, picking up precisely where it left off in the final act. Katie kills Micah, snaps Daniel’s neck and then steals baby Hunter, once again disappearing into the night. The demon has finally collected on the deal it made decades prior, and new questions are left for future sequels. For starters, what the hell is a demonically possessed Katie now going to do with the baby?!
The ’80s-set Paranormal Activity 3 may be the fan favorite sequel, but it was Paranormal Activity 2 that took an incredibly simple story, cracked it wide open, and made a franchise out of the whole thing. Revisiting the 2010 film this week, I was reminded that it’s in many ways the perfect sequel, both building and improving upon its predecessor.
Most franchises only wish they had a Paranormal Activity 2 to really get things going.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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