The horror genre is always on the lookout for its next, marketable mascot; however, the choice to try and make a franchise out of Scott Derrickson’s Sinister seemed to be something of a questionable decision the second it was first announced. It’s not that the original Sinster was not up to snuff; on the contrary, as the movie proved to be an incredibly creepy affair that clung with me for days afterward. But its climactic twist – which sees us finding out that the family we’ve been following aren’t going to be the ones to end the terror, like in every other horror film, but instead are just another clutch of doomed victims – suggests that the movie would work a hell of a lot better as just a truly unnerving one-off.
Still, whether we liked it or not, Sinister 2 came with big hopes of maybe becoming the next Insidious, or better yet, the next Conjuring. However, it soon became apparent that the evil, child corrupting Bughuul – an entity whose name sounds like a Scilian pasta dish – was more of a one-hit wonder…
After the events that saw true crime novelist Ellison Oswalt and his wife and son get chopped into spare parts by their supernaturally corrupted daughter, the awkward “Deputy So-and-so”, who aided the doomed writer in his investigations has now become a private investigator who spends his down time obsessing over the events of that gruesome night. In fact, Ex-Deputy So-and-so has taken upon himself to try and stop anything like it from ever happening again and after figuring out a pattern for all the murder/disappearances, he’s been going around torching the various murder houses in order to break the chain.
However, during his lonely quest, he eventually runs into Courtney Collins and her twin boys Zach and Dylan who are on the run from their violent patriarch, Clint, and have chosen the site of a past murder to settle in. As per the rules of the soul swallowing demon, Bughuul, any child who moves into the scene of a previous killing is now fair game for a spot of corruption, and before you know it, the more sensitive Zach is being visited by the ghostly forms of the creature’s previous targets.
Attempting to bend Zach to their master’s will, the gaggle of ghost-kids visit the poor kid every night and proceed to eagerly show him the grainy footage they filmed back when they happily slaughtered their own familes. However, stress levels get extra high when Clint finally tracks them down and gets a court order to take the boys away.
However, moving to another location is the last step in Bughuul’s process of spreading his evil around like the Satanic clap, but when his kids come to persuade Zach to perform his sacred duty, he finds that it not his soul he should have been protecting. Can Deputy So-and-so break the chain before Bughuul racks up another film to add to his collection of America’s Foulest Home Videos?
While I often feel that Scott Derrickson’s Sinister doesn’t get the credit it deserves, even it’s most staunchest hater would have to concede that it’s pretty fucking sweet when compared to its errant follow up that contains virtually none of the suspense, chills and teeth grinding dread that came free-of-charge with the vastly superior original. The main issue with sequelizing Sinister lies with the fact that the first film didn’t really leave that much to sequelize as it’s story refreshingly refused to leave any pathways for a story to comfortably continue. Once we discover what Bughuul is and how he operates, all that’s left is for an obsessed Ethan Hawke to blindly lead his family into ruin as we run headlong into the impressively grim denouement. Case closed – or so you’d think.
Enter James Ronsone’s sole returning character (beside Bughuul, of course), who was such an ineffectual influence on the original story, the movie didn’t even deem to give him a name as he provided nervous comic relief and the occasional spot of exposition. Now upgraded to lead character (but still curiously missing an actual name), Ronsone, through no fault of his own, now has to figure out how to make his fidgeting ex-deputy into a credible lead – it’s almost as awkward as if New Line had made one if John Saxon’s dopey deputies from Nightmare On Elm Street the lead in Part 2 and while it’s certainly a bold and original choice, it doesn’t work particularly well.
However, maybe the filmmakers didn’t think this would be much of an issue as the main thrust of Sinister 2 this time, is that we now see Bughuul at work mainly from the point of view of one of his victims. However, this also proves to be an issue because in one single stroke, it manages to remove much of the first film’s mystery. In Sinister, we – much like the Oswalts – had no idea what was really occurring before it was too late, but here we se virtually every aspect of Bughuul’s methods as and when they happen. The problem is, it turns out that they’re not that interesting to watch as they mostly involve a bunch of prophetic nightmares and his ghostly child-slaves indulging in a spot of ghoulish peer pressure in order to turn young Zach to the dark side. It also doesn’t help that both Zach and Dylan are fairly annoying, with the revelation that Bughuul’s actually targeting the “evil” twin proving to be as shocking as the “revelation” that Senator Palpatine was actually Darth Sidious.
Not even the return of the deeply upsetting home videos that featured whole familes getting executed by a mysterious assailant manages to bring the scares as it’s now been reduced to a simple, grainy and disposable example of creative killing. While the original film’s vignettes were legitimately terrifying and saw victims despatched in coldly nonchalant fashion – however, here, the short films seem a little too over thought for their own good and thus lose virtually all their original power. The lawnmower death in the previous instalment was truly a ghastly moment that was perfectly pitch, in comparison, having a family dangled by their feet over a swamp for passing crocodiles to chomp on seems way too complex to be fully scary. I mean, sure, Bughuul infuses his victims with a determined sense of purpose, but to pull some of these kills off, he’d have to full on turn his kids into fucking Macgyver in order to figure out the mechanics…
Speaking of Baghuul, the shadowy, mouthless bastard turns out to be far too nebulous a presence to be an adequate, returning villain, with the lion’s share of the dirty work being performed by his cadre of spectral ankle biters and the big bad himself reduced to empty jump scares. To delve too much into what makes the lank-haired corrupter tick would probably be a mistake as explaining too much will undoubtedly defuse the mystery, but his paticular form of villainy is ultimately rendered horribly dull by his mostly hands-off brand of management.
Boring adults, annoying kids and a horror villain who farms out the work to creepy child labour, all amount to a sequel that can’t hold a candle to the original.
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