Time for a good scare? Sinister 2 is now in Cinemas

In “Sinister,” from 2012, a true-crime writer (Ethan Hawke) moved his family into a house that had been the site of a multiple murder. In the attic he discovered grainy home-movie-like films of other killings. He also met a pagan entity, Bughuul, who in whisking the souls of children to a nether realm, creates minions who do his homicidal bidding.
Spectral killers host a snuff-film screening for a friend in “Sinister 2.”The Big Picture on the Mini-Movie in ‘Sinister 2’ and OthersAUG. 19, 2015
The longhaired, pale-faced Bughuul (Nicholas King) returns in “Sinister 2,” to terrorize 9-year-old twins, Dylan and Zach (the brothers Robert and Dartanian Sloan), and their mother, Courtney (Shannyn Sossamon), who have escaped to a country home to elude Courtney’s abusive husband (Lea Coco). Also back is the sympathetic and now former deputy sheriff So & So (James Ransone) — that’s the character’s name — who assists Courtney and her sons. The kids aren’t all right: Dylan and Zach (representing the movie’s apparent target demographic) are coached in Bughuul’s recruitment program by tweenish specters using, yep, grisly homemade snuff films.

But the thrills aren’t the same. “Sinister” trafficked in musty horror riffs (old technology à la “V/H/S”; almost-other-dimensional house interiors, as in “Insidious”; very naughty kids, as in “Children of the Corn”), but benefited from actors like Mr. Hawke and inestimably from Christopher Norr’s high-contrast, deep-focus cinematography. Despite Mr. Ransone’s goofy charm, “Sinister 2” can’t claim the same finesse, substituting pedestrian plotting and a more graphic gore for the original’s restraint. Bughuul, take me away!

“Sinister 2” is rated R. Immolations, impalements, hungry rats.

Credits: Focus Features