Nagae Toshikazu's Japanese-made sequel to the American horror sensation "Paranormal Activity" (2009) is a tedious and somewhat confusing film that tries to go for the pseudo-documentary/found footage style look of the original but soon degenerates to a by-the-numbers shock film. Its over-the-top finale is self-indulgent and shatters any realism that the film had hoped to accomplish.
"Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Nights" supposedly takes place after the events of "Paranormal Activity"(Tokyo Night was released at around the same time as the American-made sequel "Paranormal Activity 2"). Pretty college student Yamano Haruka (Aoyama Noriko) has returned to Tokyo after getting involved in a severe car accident in San Diego, California where she was studying. She broke both of her legs in the car crash and is now recuperating at her younger brother Koichi's (Nakamura Aoi) house in Tokyo.
No sooner after settling into the two-story house, does strange and unsettling occurrences begin to happen - weird thumping noises are heard in the night, glasses break without explanation, doors open and close by themselves etc. Believing the house to be possessed by evil spirits they call upon a Shinto Priest to do a traditional blessing of the house but to no avail. Soon the poltergeist effects escalate and intensify. Haruka later reveals that the person that she struck with her car in California was none-other-than Katie from the first movie. Haruka surmises that the supposed demon that possessed Katie has now latched on to her.
Nagae Toshikazu is no stranger to the ghost/horror genre having directed "Ghost System" and "Gakko No Kaidan" but as with those films, his tendency to overplay the fear factor does do a disservice to the audience. The pacing and tone of "Tokyo Night" was also a bit weak.
Some of the scenes seem forced and scripted and did not seem to attempt to go for any sense of realism. It was also unconvincing how "conveniently" Koichi was able to capture all these paranormal events on his camera at the precise moment of their occurrence. There didn't seem to be any battery-time limitations to his camera and they seemed to always be on even during the most mundane of sequences.
Aoyama Noriko and Nakayama Aoi do decent work as the haunted siblings but their acting shifts wildly from good to over-the-top.
While Tod Williams' "Paranormal Activity 2" was also a disappointment compared to Oren Peli's original, it still tried to distinguish itself from the original (the use of night-vision technology, expanding on the back story of the original movie etc.) Nagae seems to want to go the other way and draw as much inspiration from the original as he can even going so far as borrowing the same sequences from the original. "Tokyo Night's" only distinction seems to the the setting (Tokyo) and the fact that Haruka is unable to walk (which they don't seem to play up as much as they should have).
It would have been much more interesting if Nagae could have been more inventive with the story (have the setting in an apartment complex or have Koichi broadcast the events to YouTube etc.) It was interesting to see the Shinto blessing/exorcism rituals and I wish they would have played that up more.
In the end, "Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night" seemed to be more like a "one-trick pony". A shameless tie-in and gimmick movie that piggy backs on the success of a much better film.
"Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Nights" supposedly takes place after the events of "Paranormal Activity"(Tokyo Night was released at around the same time as the American-made sequel "Paranormal Activity 2"). Pretty college student Yamano Haruka (Aoyama Noriko) has returned to Tokyo after getting involved in a severe car accident in San Diego, California where she was studying. She broke both of her legs in the car crash and is now recuperating at her younger brother Koichi's (Nakamura Aoi) house in Tokyo.
No sooner after settling into the two-story house, does strange and unsettling occurrences begin to happen - weird thumping noises are heard in the night, glasses break without explanation, doors open and close by themselves etc. Believing the house to be possessed by evil spirits they call upon a Shinto Priest to do a traditional blessing of the house but to no avail. Soon the poltergeist effects escalate and intensify. Haruka later reveals that the person that she struck with her car in California was none-other-than Katie from the first movie. Haruka surmises that the supposed demon that possessed Katie has now latched on to her.
Nagae Toshikazu is no stranger to the ghost/horror genre having directed "Ghost System" and "Gakko No Kaidan" but as with those films, his tendency to overplay the fear factor does do a disservice to the audience. The pacing and tone of "Tokyo Night" was also a bit weak.
Some of the scenes seem forced and scripted and did not seem to attempt to go for any sense of realism. It was also unconvincing how "conveniently" Koichi was able to capture all these paranormal events on his camera at the precise moment of their occurrence. There didn't seem to be any battery-time limitations to his camera and they seemed to always be on even during the most mundane of sequences.
Aoyama Noriko and Nakayama Aoi do decent work as the haunted siblings but their acting shifts wildly from good to over-the-top.
While Tod Williams' "Paranormal Activity 2" was also a disappointment compared to Oren Peli's original, it still tried to distinguish itself from the original (the use of night-vision technology, expanding on the back story of the original movie etc.) Nagae seems to want to go the other way and draw as much inspiration from the original as he can even going so far as borrowing the same sequences from the original. "Tokyo Night's" only distinction seems to the the setting (Tokyo) and the fact that Haruka is unable to walk (which they don't seem to play up as much as they should have).
It would have been much more interesting if Nagae could have been more inventive with the story (have the setting in an apartment complex or have Koichi broadcast the events to YouTube etc.) It was interesting to see the Shinto blessing/exorcism rituals and I wish they would have played that up more.
In the end, "Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night" seemed to be more like a "one-trick pony". A shameless tie-in and gimmick movie that piggy backs on the success of a much better film.