Meanwhile, Dylan is experiencing nightmares, ghostly visitations and a film festival of horror in the basement.
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Bughuul himself remains largely in the shadows, presumably because his long stringy hair, black suit with white shirt (its cuffs longer than the jacket sleeves), and mouthless face make him appear like a slightly more ghoulish Michael Jackson. One of the dead kids tells Dylan, “Once you watch all of them you’ll never have a bad dream again”.
Instead of simply rehashing the original movie’s plot, Sinister 2 addresses the questions left by it. The answers are surprisingly satisfactory, and they open the door to the dysfunctional dynamics of a new family.
For all its shocks and wannabe-disturbing imagery (trapped Bible-thumpers being mauled by rats etc.), nothing in Sinister 2 comes across as believably scary. He wants to break the Bughuul murder cycle, and if the cold sweat of his anxiety could do the trick, the film would be over the minute he arrives on screen.
A former cop investigating a haunted house finds that an unsuspecting family has moved in. Finding sanctuary there are Courtney (Shannyn Sossamon) and her two boys, Dylan and Zach (Robert and Dartanian Sloane), who are hiding out from her abusive ex-husband. The horrifying 8mm home movies that were so effective in the first film are back, but much of their punch is gone, replaced by increasingly absurd Saw-esque scenarios.
Like its predecessor, “Sinister 2” is written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, who have come up with a whole new series of twisted snuff films. Foy pushes the boundaries further, and has a particularly good time with those horrifying shorts embedded in the film.
For Ransone, the biggest challenge was stepping into the lead role.
Unlike the first Sinister though, the sequel doesn’t stick the landing. For Ciaran Foy’s horror film, in which she plays a mother named Courtney Collins, one of the songs in her playlist is a song by Sting. So it was more the adults who were responsible for the atmosphere of the movie. As compared to the original, Sinister 2 has everything in excess. “The characters are always within his eye”, the director says.
Unlike Trank, Landis doesn’t stink the joint out with his second effort, American Ultra. With the focus shifted so heavily to the children, Bughuul feels like a bit player in his own film, showing up occasionally for a jump scare, like a gothic jack-in-the-box.
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Eisenberg and Stewart are Mike and Phoebe, a couple of slackers in Smalltown, USA. Turns out he’s actually a dormant assassin from a failed program (sound familiar?) and now the agency is tying loose ends. He is the kind of guy who asks, with genuine interest, if everything is OK. Unfortunately, it’s apparently not quite up to par in any other area. Not only did it bring attention to the genocide of almost a million people at the hands of the military in Indonesia in the late ’60s, it also managed to trigger remorse in one of the men responsible. “It was fun, but I was definitely a little reckless being when I was younger, so I don’t remember much!” He’s provided with plenty of details, but little remorse. Doesn’t Bughuul see that he has more centuries of nefariousness to offer him? Drugging them does not make them as light as a sack of bird feathers the last time I checked. Both are over 100 years old – and while his mom is sharp as a tack, his dad is weak, withered, blind and deaf. Adi goes from upset to livid as each one of the encounters unfolds in similar fashion.
