I wanted to get back to this, haha. It seems I'm obsessed, but I happened to think of a concrete example on how the makers didn’t get "it" in the sequel and I wanted to share.
The very central dragging scene.
The scene where the woman (Katie?) was dragged out of bed in the first movie was awesome. It works because of the unknown factor. She was being dragged very purposefully, yet there doesn’t seem to be anywhere the force could be taking her. So where was it taking her? It’s interesting, it’s intriguing, it’s potentially terrifying.
Also, I’m 100% convinced that the scene came from the film maker’s dream. It happens to be an exact replica of an archetypical dream of ours. Although less prevalent, it’s the same as for example, dreams of losing teeth or going to prison. A dream where we are suddenly pulled out of bed by an invisible force and dragged around the house, the dream lasts only a few seconds, so there is no time to reach any destination. Even if we haven’t had the dream ourselves, it's still already there, we all have this exact scene within us. So, it’s a familiar, terrible unknown that works.
And this all makes the scene very powerful.
In the sequel the scene is repeated, except this time without any subtlety they show you what the exact intent of the force is. It wants to drag you into the cellar. That’s… That’s…
Who the fuck cares?
And that’s also the same reason why you don’t show that the bad being is a rubber faced gargoyle, or whatever. It’s the unknown lurking out of sight, it's the endless sinister possibility, which tickles the brain, not some boring ass-troll.
Never listen to Steven Spielberg.