Of all the names that I expected to pop up as a possible director for Paranormal Activity 2: Book of Shadows, Brian De Palma wasn’t even remotely among them. At all. In any way. I might have guessed Sergei Eisenstein before I would have guessed Brian De Palma.
But according to the LA Times he’s in the mix, and you know what? He’s a great choice. If Paranormal Activity 2 follows the first film’s video camera POV gag, De Palma could be the perfect director. Yeah, I know he kind of boned that POV stuff in Redacted, but maybe he learned his lesson. And the idea of a voyeuristic gaze being the central conceit of a De Palma film… well, he’s all about that! The more I think about it the more I think that a Paranormal Activity 2 from De Palma could be incredible. As for whether it would be profitable… well, that’s Paramount’s problem.
The other names the LA Times reports as being in the ring are Greg McLean, the Aussie behind Wolf Creek, and Brad Anderson, who between The Machinist and Transsiberian seems a little too ambitious to take the gig. But what do I know? Everybody needs money some times.
Whoever comes on has a helluva slog ahead of them. The movie has no script or actors, but it has a release date of Halloween. This year! Eight months from now. Let’s see who can get this fucker turned around that quickly.
14 comments
Am I the only one who thought Paranormal Activity was WAAAAY overrated?
Brad Anderson would be a great pick. I still have deep affection for Session 9.
You sank my Battleship Potemkin…
That's a stupid title for the movie. Unfortunately, knowing it's a sequel, even if it's only a pseudo-sequel, lowers my enthusiasm, even if DePalma directs. It might be interesting though. I Netflixed Redacted but never ended up watching it.
No, Reader, you're not the only who thought it was overrated. I thought it was fucking idotic. It's on dvd, but it's still playing at the local 2nd run theater so I figured I would check it out in a theater, the was it was meant to be seen. Okay, the thing that kept bugging the hell out of me is this: If you hear strange noises downstairs in the middle of the night, and you go down with your video camera to check it out….why the hell wouldn't you turn on a fucking light? The two retards in this movie walk around in the dark for half the running time. I kept asking myself, and then my freind "why don't they turn on a fucking light?" My friend shrugged. The other half of the film is either the two of them bitching at each other or….and this is soooooo scary….the two of them sleeping. How was this a movie? two people sleeping, then, knowing that a DEMON is stalking them, walking around in the dark. Idiots. the only thing about this hunk of shit that's scary in the least, is how they managed to con 110 million dollars out of the public for a film shot on video cameras of two twits sleeping. At least the Blair witch project had atmosphere and something to look at. In that movie, we at least got to see nature and when it was dark, it was because there were no lights to turn on. Here's the thing, if i'm being stalked by a demon or a ghost in my apartment? I'm turning on all the lights and they're staying on all the time. Fuck the light bill, I want to see what's coming.
I would love if Greg McLean. He's great at making sympathetic, interesting characters, and it's been too long since he directed anything (plus, as his other two movies show, the man knows his horror).
paranormal activity was far from perfect, decent even, but i thought it was more effective with its actual scares than most horror movies in recent memory, including blair witch. Michael, i dont get how you can walk into a horror movie and be asking yourself asinine questions like 'why isnt he turning on the light?'. it seems to me that if thats the stuff running through your head, maybe horror isnt the genre for you.
As much as I'd love to see De Palma's take on this material, I don't see it happening with such an accelerated production schedule. But who am I kidding? If he actually gave it serious thought, it'd be the biggest surprise since Werner Herzog sampled Abel Ferrara's back-catalogue.
De Palma can't get his actors to actually "act" like normal living breathing people. Bad performances has become the mans trade mark it seems.
I don't think that's the title Will H, it's a Blair Witch sequel joke…
DePalma taking this on would finally convince me to watch the first one. And wouldn't the world be better with him back at the top of the box office?
A rifftrax was just released for Paranormal Activity… what a godawful movie. At least I had Mike, Kevin, and Bill to help me get through it.
PA was very careful footed for the most part. Stuck to the core "truths" around these sorts of events. Boyfriend was suitably pro-active and they seemed to have been in the relationship long enough for him to put up with the sudden PitA she became – poltergeists aside. But they blew it with the exorcism video, the silly Ouija board sequence and this continual ability for them to fall asleep in a room where someone was apparently coming in and fucking with them. This was a problem with rolling it out to feature length. They really needed to have swapped rooms at the end of the second act and changed the rules a little bit (had some of those endless hour loops feature a bit of edgy wakefulness). The idea that the act of video-taping the demon was actively enraging it was a good one.
Hey, how about Martin Scorcese Directing it and while were at it, Leo will have a cameo???
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