Satan in Suburbia

The Mephisto Waltz is a strange, semi successful supernatural yarn starring Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bisset. Alda plays a frustrated music journalist who becomes chums with a creepy pianist who likes a bit of sorcery. It's got a tv-movie feel about it ie not scary and it's amusingly 70's dated but it's alright, the Hammer-esque story has a nice twisted ending, a smidge of 'mosphere and Alda was way better than I expected.



I found myself a little spooked while watching the original PA so I wasn't expecting much from the recently released sequel, Paranormal Activity 2. The second film is a prequel thingy, focusing on the sister & family of the original hauntee and though it makes a decent effort in tying the two stories together the main problem is the lack of dread. The first couple of scares bombed in the cinema causing much tittering including my own and there's an over reliance on bangjump scares but probably unsurprisingly the cctv footage trick is getting well tiresome. Things do ramp up a bit in the final 20 mins or so but still struggles to be more than a mediocre for the cash sequel. It's doing ok at the box office so they'll probably make a dozen or so but maybe if they franchise it abroad it could retain some interest. Trailer for the Japanese tie-in below.