As I’ve said before, horror sequels operate under the law of diminishing returns. Familiarity is the antithesis of terror, and each successive installment only adds to the familiarity. The other element that undermines horror sequels is that the central mystery of the first film is usually resolved, and the sequel needs to explain and add extra layers to a resolved mystery. Most of these problems affected Sinister 2, the horror sequel which sees Ciarán Foy taking over the director’s chair from Scott Derrickson, who has moved on to Doctor Strange. The film winds up being a modestly entertaining horror sequel that is never good enough to warrant its existence, though it is a step above a majority of found footage films.
The first film ended with Ethan Hawke’s Ellison Oswalt discovering that he’s part of a horrific pattern of murders connected to the spirit of Bughuul, better known as the Boogeyman, before being murdered himself. Sinister 2 picks up shortly after those events with Deputy So & So (James Ransone), now an ex-deputy, researching the pattern of death and evil, committing various acts of arson to burn down the houses of these grisly murders and stop the cycle of death. While stopping at a secluded house on the countryside in order to burn it to the ground, So & So discovers that the supposedly abandoned house has been the home to a single mother, Courtney (Shannyn Sossamon), and her two young sons Dylan (Robert Daniel Sloan) and Zach (Dartanian Sloan). In a contentious custody battle with her abusive husband, Courtney has secretly been living in the house, though she’s aware of the horrible atrocity that happened on the property. Dylan has been having encounters with a group of youthful ghouls, each a victim of Bughuul, and watching the 8mm films of their gruesome demises. But So & So can’t let the family leave the house; for if they leave, they trigger the next sacrifice.
Sinister 2 does have a nice atmospheric look and tone, a nice blend of darkness and textured creepiness. As with its predecessor, the 8mm footage of past murders look wonderfully creepy, a grainy take on found footage without being an actual found footage movie. However, one of the 8mm kills is straight up lifted from 2 Fast 2 Furious. But despite its look and a few effective jolts, the film is undermined by some half-written characters. Screenwriters Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, a former film critic at Ain’t It Cool News, fail to flesh out their characters beyond their generic frame. Only Deputy So & So performs actions that are motivated by character, but he’s also the only character to return from the previous film.
But the underwhelming characters leave Sinister 2 feeling like it missed a big opportunity with its horror. Played by Lea Coco, the abusive husband, Clint, is closer to a cartoon character than the actual embodiment of the Boogeyman. Had the character been given a tad more depth than generic rage-filled man, he might’ve been able to add a layer of real life terror to the supernatural elements surrounding it. But this abusive character doesn’t exist to provide a commentary on domestic violence against women, he exists so that characters are forced from their home and thus incite the bloody conclusion.
Fans of the first film shouldn’t be disappointed with Sinister 2. Though I couldn’t go out on a limb and refer to Sinister 2 as a good movie, it does provide enough startles and scares without being tedious or boring. But for horror fans who want a bit more out of their spooky stories, Sinister 2 leaves a lot of its more interesting ideas off screen. For his second feature, following 2012’s Citadel, Ciarán Foy shows some talent behind the camera, but the film is consistently underserved by weak characters, though they’re not egregiously awful. As a whole, Sinister 2 is a passable horror sequel. No more. No less.
