Sinister 2
A young mother and her twin sons move into a rural house that’s marked for death.
Cast
Shannyn Sossamon – Courtney Collins
Robert Daniel Sloan – Dylan Collins
Dartanian Sloan – Zach Collins
James Ransone – Ex-Deputy So & So
Terrible
Sinister 2 was so bad that I exited the cinema feeling as though I genuinely hadn’t just watched a movie. The boring plot and lack of scares / jumpy moments made this feature a dire attempt at horror all the way through; as sequels or prequels go it is one of THE WORST I have ever had to endure. Quite literally NOTHING happens, 85% of the movie is set in a pretty wooden house on a southern American farm where a woman in her late thirties struggles to look after her two boys whilst hiding out from her ex-husband. Thing is, it is this element the producers focus on – which slows the movie down and turns it into a country soap opera. Seriously, watching this tripe was like sitting through an episode of Little House on the Sodding Prairie. I’m actually struggling to find elements I can elaborate on because Sinister 2 was so uneventful.
Scare-wise, there were a few bits that made me jump, I’m not going to lie. But this happened literally only about three times throughout the whole movie – which wasn’t enough. This is a Blumhouse movie!
..then again, I’ve noticed a pattern with Blumhouse lately (see review The Gift for more details).
Ultimately, Sinister 2 is an in-depth look at parent separation and how children are affected. Funnily enough, one of them turns to the company of ghost children whenever he is in bed; a group of pale kids with an awful dress sense (one of the girls seems to be constantly in a wooly hat whereas the others are dressed for Spring) who enjoy a late night rendez-vous with the nearest warm-blooded human child.
I was seriously bored, I really was.
Sinister 2 is like a spin-off of the first movie, not a sequel. It drags itself along at an excruciatingly slow pace, throwing in a few family deaths to remind the audience what they’re watching. Because this is what the first instalment was based on; families being butchered in – yes – sinister ways. Bughuul, the strange looking man / monster (what exactly is the bloody thing?) makes an appearance at random intervals, popping up to also remind the audience that what they are watching is one of the Sinister movies and that they haven’t sat down in the wrong cinema screen to watch a random Country & Western flick about a single mother living in a shack. I found this slightly surprising also – Bughuul being absent for most of the film as though the actor who plays him was on holiday, sunning himself on a beach somewhere, but was called into the studio to fill a few empty slots. The poor bugger was probably as unenthused to take part as I was to watch it.
This really wasn’t going well.
The Children
Milo – a ghostly child who Dylan strangely befriends instead of shitting himself and running for his life like any normal victim of a haunting – leads the boy down into the basement to watch Super 8 footage of families being murdered. Various other children appear from the shadows as back-up. Or sidekicks. Or whatever else.. to be honest I’d lost interest by this point and couldn’t give a crap why they were there. I did notice one thing though; the children were the most ineffective ‘ghouls’ I have ever seen in a movie. Like characters from an episode of 90’s tv show Goosebumps, the kids just stand around, occasionally making a slight effort at acting by performing a subtle gesture such as the “shhhh” gesture. They were clearly dropped off at the studio by their parents at 08.30 in the morning, strolled on set, had their faces twatted with white-grey powder and were done by lunchtime after being directed epically to “walk in slowly and just stand there”. They blended into the background so much they were practically non-existant. Them being ghosts was actually quite ironic.
I refuse to discuss Sinister 2 any further, it just isn’t worth my time.
I’m not even going to sum it up because there is literally nothing to sum up.
Steer well clear of this movie. If you enjoyed the first, I have a feeling you will be very disappointed.
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