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SINISTER 2 (2015)
Starring: James Ransone, Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Daniel Sloan, Dartanian Sloan, Lea Coco, a bunch of undead kids and Nicholas King as "Bughuul"
Written by: Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill
Directed by: Ciarán Foy
Let me take you back 3 years ago, October 2012, a time that made bible-thumping conspiracy theorists feel like the world was ending....again....and I was just enjoying myself with horror movies to come and in October I was looking forward to watching Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, and then I destroyed all of my Silent Hill games and burned down an orphanage because my life meant nothing to me anymore...to make up for that shitty disaster, I snuck in to watch Sinister.
Now Sinister, the first movie, i thought was pretty good, it's not a great horror film, it restrains itself but it does make up for morbid entertainment quality by watching snuff movies of families getting killed and this somehow leads to a demonic entity or something called Bughuul the eater of children's souls who possesses them to murder their families while filming it all on camera which was a breath of fresh air and a neat idea considering there is a lacking soul in mainstream horror movies and Bughuul succeeds to being a new horror icon...even if he's not in the movie all that much.
I liked Sinister, even if I didn't feel like it was a GREAT horror movie, it was still GOOD.
Sinister 2 has been getting a lot of bad criticism lately and it kind of leaves me confused and rather baffled. Is it because it's not as good as the first one? Was it 3 years too late? This sequel is written by two of the same guys that did the first one and they seem to know their stuff. Truth be told, with how baffling the way the last Sinister ended who would have thought there would be anything left to flesh out in a sequel?
Insidious I feel has suffered a similar fate where the first one was really good, the second one was laughable and makes the ghost not scary by telling us who the ghost is, and Insidious 3 was a prequel because box office.
Some said they feel this sequel didn't flesh anything out with Bughuul himself, but what more would be needed to flesh out? We already know he's a demonic entity who possesses children to make snuff movies before he kills them and brings them into his snuff film dimension, some even felt the supernatural element sort of ruined the first Sinister because they expected a killer and people hate anything that surprises them unless it's well-written, but Sinister itself is so odd and has such a simple-yet-mysterious world that it really doesn't have many rules which gives it some momentum and potential for fun stuff in whatever sequels it shall spawn.
How is Sinister 2? This is a key thing that everyone SHOULD ALWAYS DO when going to ANY FILM is to have ZERO EXPECTATIONS. Which is what I had, I had zero expectations going into this movie since i didn't think the first was all that great so to be honest I didn't know what to expect from this sequel except for more fucked up death scenes in the snuff movies and not really knowing what direction the story would take if there was even one to go by.
Once I did that, I was really surprised how much i really liked this one!
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! WARNING!
In this installment we center on a runaway mom and her two sons who is trying to escape their vicious and abusive father, who just wants to ruin their lives as asshole shit head fathers go played so well you really feel the hatred and anticipating on his death. While the mom and her two sons stay in a house next to an abandoned church, and this house in particular has Bughuul and his twisted undead killer children manipulating one of the boys into a murderous snuff filmmaker for Bughuul's bloodshed. The deputy from the first Sinister is back but he's an ex-deputy in this movie and is on the move going from place-to-place where the Bughuul family murders occurred and to try and stop Bughuul somehow. Bughuul scares some trespassers in his way, the undead killer children are creepier as ever, bloodshed ensues and it gets crazy creepy.
The writing for this movie, while flawed in some places, does actually do something very good that all horror movies are suppose to do:
Is it the snuff movies? They're very well done and they get continuously fucked up as the film progresses (there's one where a family is hung upside down over a lake and a fucking alligator comes up and chomps on their heads one-by-one and it actually scare me! I think my favorite is the church scene where rats are eating out of people's insides as they bleed to death which is hardcore), the death scenes in general are deliciously bloody and gruesomely disturbing and won't ever leave you. So that's good.
Is it the scares? Yes, before you jump to conclusions, there are some jump-scares present that at some times are effective when well-orchestrated, other times they are very unnecessary (there's a scene where the ex-deputy is alone in his hotel room looking through files on his computer, then mysteriously more pictures pop up and then it shuts off, and he can see Bughuul in his computer screen and Bughuul doesn't do anything to him and then KSSSHHH computer comes back on with a Bagull sign written in digital blood appears on his screen) there are at least 4 unnecessary jump scares that you can see coming a mile away and they don't do anything because it's done in a way where you're expecting it and that takes you out of the fun because scares only work when they're unpredictable, and some of these are mostly just recycled scares we saw from the first Sinister which was pretty lazy.
Is this movie even scary? I think the key element to horror is not only can it be scary but more disturbing and creepy, this sequel is definitely more creepy and disturbing so those elements keep it as a good horror movie, because horror is not always suppose to give anyone a good time, but some of us who are sick bastards and bitches we find fascination in the blood and the unknown and how, well, sinister it can get. So it's not really scary, but more creepy and disturbing.
The music is deliciously creepy that helps sell the scenes with their icky creepiness.
The effects are very good to note as well, the scene where the ex-deputy walks through the hall and shines his light on the shadow children getting larger and larger until SURPRISE Bughuul pops up which was well-done, it wasn't scary but still fun to see.
What really makes this movie work is the characters, yes some of the acting and or awkward lines written in the film stick out like a sore thumb when it's delivered, but the acting does feel very genuine with each character:
The Mom is an abused wife who is desperate for peace for her sons and herself as well while fighting for their lives at the same time, the ex-deputy is a comedic worry-wart, a seemingly hopeless romantic and very determined to help this family out, the two boys going through their own changes where one of the boys is kind and decent is being bullied into watching the undead children's snuff films showing us how it's unfolding and the other brother getting jealous of him being picked by the demonic ghost kids merely because he's the son that's slowly becoming violent and twisted as their father from watching the abuse which does tend to happen among some children, especially when coming to the knowledge of the family's abusive relationship with their father that comes off very effective and makes you feel really torn, you feel for all these characters and everything they're going through and you really want to see the asshole father die as horribly as possible.
Bughuul seems to have a little more brief screen time here and there, even though he doesn't do anything but scare people like that old guy you see sitting outside an old gas station, or a bar, or a Slipknot concert, but while he's still going on with his horrible schemes thankfully this movie is doing something right where everyone else is telling it not to which leads me to believe audiences of horror are sorely missing the point on and that's there's not much more back-story or anything about Bughuul being fleshed out.
While sequels can be useful to tell us more about our slashers or monsters of sorts, while the mythos can be interesting, the bigger issue is that these monsters wouldn't be scary anymore because we know who or what they are and it takes the mystery out of it and without the mystery you don't have anywhere to go but making pointless sequels that just have bloody creative/uncreative deaths like Friday the 13th or Saw franchises. We know enough about Bughuul and his abilities are scary enough, he's an entity that seems unkillable and can be anywhere and it's unknown how he can do this and that's what makes it good for horror standards he's scary as he is.
If I had to make another nitpick of what's badly done in this movie is the one scene with exposition where the ex-deputy goes to a psychologist, ghostologist or whatever-the-fuck-ologist who tells him about more victims of Bughuul stuff we already know, which I guess was added in in case people who didn't see the first movie would catch on, but it's not handled in a creative way and it does showcase that crappily cliche possessed ham radio that makes two or three appearances, yeah it is a stupid fucking dumb cliche and it's distracting and embarrassing with how lazy the writers would get with their script, but still it didn't ruin the movie for me, it goes by fast and you forget about it soon after, still it felt like it wasn't needed.
The finale is a doozy that gets super creepy with the kid setting the dad on fire (YEAH!! BURN YOU MOTHERFUCKER!) while filming the scene, then he gets hit with the ex-deputy's car (YES! KIDS GETTING HURT AND OR KILLED IN HORROR MOVIES!) who comes to rescue but not before they go back into the house to fix the deputy's hand after getting his fingers cut off, then the house goes crazy, the camera gets broken which seems to be Bughuul's kill switch, and he takes the bad son away with him and the others get away for another sequel.
Yeah, it seems dumb, but it's done in such a way that makes me love it more as a supernatural horror flick, and it's also kind of stupid that this film ignores some continuity in the first film, like didn't the camera and film come back after Ethan Hawk burned it all at first? Apparently that doesn't seem to happen here at the end which leads me to think that the writers didn't really know how to make a good ending or to keep their continuity in for a more challenging ending to this sequel but instead it's left on a silly cliffhanger and that's it.
This seems to have progressed into something a little bit on the negative side than I really wanted it to sound, but to Sinister 2's credit it's at least a different story, it's more dependent on story than suspense I feel and maybe with its restraints being loosened it might contribute to the film losing its way in terms of keeping it scary and like I said the lazy writing is noticeable and distracting at times...
....but despite all of those flaws, this is still a good sequel, it's definitely more entertaining than the first movie and it gives you chills as it unfolds, there's some laughs both intentional and not intentional, it falls short of being something with a little more thought put into it, but it has more goodies in it that you can just live with it.
Sinister 2 was a fun horror ride and a worthy sequel to its predecessor, it has some problems here and there, but it's creepy and gruesome and entertaining so much so that I can't wait for a Sinister 3 and who knows? Maybe the 3rd one will be perfect and hopefully not just a Direct-to-DVD sequel spunker.
It's effective, it's creepy, it's memorable and gruesomely fun and is definitely not boring in the least which is what a sequel should be like, and it's much better than most of the mainstream horror movies have been in a while since Cabin in the Woods and Insidious.
7/10