‘Paranormal’ sequel has familiar focus

Again, the gimmick is that everything we see comes from a “real’’ video source, primarily the home surveillance cameras that Dan installs around the house after things start getting weird. (The comparatively upscale visuals must be where the sequel’s $2.7 million budget went. That and the catering.)

And again things go bump and eventually yarrrragghhh in the night. The basic notions that made “Paranormal Activity’’ work remain solid: that we’re all spooked by midnight noises, that our need to record every aspect of our lives means we may see things we’re not meant to, and that there’s nothing scarier than a baby being silently dragged across his crib by an invisible demon at 3 in the morning.

Yet predictability has set in, too. The visual grammar of the scenes is unvarying: a wide shot of banal domestic non-action, pause, pause, and then BOO. Rinse, repeat. Only a few sequences stick to the ribs, one involving kitchen cupboards, the other an extremely reluctant trip by Kristi to the basement.

“Paranormal Activity 2’’ cooks along eerily enough until the screenplay starts giving us background information and character motivation and other things a campfire horror tale doesn’t need. But campfire tales aren’t interested in establishing a franchise, and “P.A. 2’’ labors mightily in that direction.

One serious drawback to a movie so reliant on silence: It gives an opening to every self-styled comedian in the audience to talk back to the screen. There’s one in every crowd; the night I saw “Paranormal Activity 2,’’ there were at least three, each a legend in his own mind and a pox upon his neighbors. But maybe that’s how the new rules of entertainment work: Fake reality’s up on the screen; the real show’s down in the seats.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.