When Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity burst onto the nation's cinema screens last year, the horror genre got a much needed-jolt in the arm.

Proving there was still plenty of life left in the fake-documentary 'found footage' format, the movie scared up over $100 million in the United States alone.

And, as is so often the way in the film world, money talks and so, barely 12 months later, we get Paranormal Activity 2.

From speaking to fellow movie fans and critics the original was in many ways the classic 'Marmite' cinema experience – I for one liked it, whereas one of my office colleague's trotted out the 'worst film ever' line.

Well, anyone who did not enjoy the original do everything in your power to avoid this, as there is nothing to see for you here.

In fact, my major gripe with the film is the fact that this is at times nothing more than a mere rehash of the first.

That is not to say I was expecting full blown demons and big-budget bloodshed, but it does get a bit tiresome before the eventual pay-off.

Credit must go to the screenwriters though this time around, as they elect to fit the proceedings in this film around the events of the first, rather than go down the ultra-lazy route of simply repeating the spooky goings-on in a new location.

Basically the film moves around a Californian family, complete with baby son, who find themselves subjected to all the banging door, clanging pan creepiness of the first.

I don't want to get bogged down in too much of the detail as it will give too much away, but suffice to say things unravel slowly (very slowly it must be said) before the family reveal the full scale of what is happening to them.

On the plus side there are a number of very well-orchestrated shock scenes, and the acting is solid throughout, including a 'how-did-they-do-that' performance from toddler Hunter.

The downside though is that things move so slowly, seemingly much more so than first time round, and when things do heat up, instead of getting out of there the family decide to try and resolve the problems, which just smacks as grossly unrealistic.

As an aside the whole thing may also be helped our hindered by just exactly who you see this with – on your own I can imagine this film to be a pretty intense experience, but in a packed cinema full of giggling, chattering teens (like ours was) it is a very different matter.

Paranormal Activity 2 is not a bad film, far from it, and if our audience is anything to go by, is likely to rustle up some pretty impressive business.

It is just a shame the makers adopted the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mentality and did not stretch things further.