Wednesday Review: Sinister 2

Before seeing this moving, my feelings on the matter went through something of a roller-coaster:

• Initially, I thought a sequel to Sinister was a terrible idea. We knew Baghuul's pattern of killing, and he's a supernatural entity whose entire existence seems based around this pattern. He isn't going to just up and decide to take Manhattan. Either the sequel would repeat the exact same events, or it would attempt to shake things up by breaking the pattern that's already been established. Either of these options seem bad.

• Then, I saw the trailer, and I began to have hope. It appeared that the film would focus mainly on a child being seduced by Baghuul. This actually seemed like a reasonable direction to go in. The previous film was all from the adult perspective, so we could legitimately get more information by following the child instead.

• Finally, before seeing the movie, I checked the rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was distraught to see it was 10%. I expected the worst.

Now, the problem with Rotten Tomatoes is that it only grades how many critics rated a film “good” versus “bad.” It makes no attempt to distinguish between mild and extreme levels of “good” and “bad.” So, if there's a strong consensus that a film is only slightly “good” or slightly “bad” we can end up with a much stronger rating one way or the other than with a divisive movie.

Reading over the blurbs on RT now, I think that's the case with this film. Most critics found it to be inadequate, but not truly awful. I fully agree that it's a bad film, but it does have it's moments, mostly in the middle and later parts of the film.

For anyone who's forgotten: The original Sinister was about a family under assault by the pagan deity Baghuul. The father from the previous film moved into a house in which a grisly murder of an entire family, minus the still-missing youngest child, had taken place. The twist was that Baghuul had enchanted the youngest child to kill his family, and then spirited the child away to a demon dimension. We also found out that rather than haunting a single house, Baghuul follows a chain. He haunts a family until they flee a house, kills them in their new home, and then haunts the new home until the next family arrives. Moving house-to-house makes Baghuul significantly harder to track for those who don't know what to look for.

Our connection to the previous film is Deputy-turned-ex-Deputy So & So (yes, that's how he's credited, and if the movie gave us another name I missed it), a minor character from the previous film. After the events of the first Sinister he somehow found out about Baghuul's pattern, and decided to stop him by burning the houses before new families can move in (there are apparently now multiple chains of Baghuul-infested houses). However, he arrives at one house too late, with a mother and her two sons taking refuge there from her abusive husband. If they leave, Baghuul goes with them.

The film is split between the sons, and So & So. Baghuul's children are trying to seduce one of the sons, Dylan, as his brother Zach grows increasingly jealous of their affection. The scenes with the children are easily the strongest point of the film. The child actors aren't anything special, but they do their jobs adequately. The twist is predictable, but I don't want to directly spoil it. I think there are darker implications at play that I love: Baghuul and his children will say or do whatever it takes to corrupt an innocent. The details are irrelevant, as long as that singular goal is achieved. Although I do think Baghuul in this movie is the master of “I meant to do that!”

So & So, on the other hand, is a definite weak point. James Ransone can't compete with Ethan Hawke's performance in the last film. While both are somber and melancholy, Hawke backed it up with a level of passion that kept you engaged. Notably, when So & So gets into a physical confrontation with the abusive husband I found myself kind of rooting for the husband, just because he was more charismatic. It didn't help that, with all the talk of his physical abuse, his on-screen crimes in this movie consist of throwing mashed potatoes at a child, and beating up a man who was trespassing on his property after sleeping with his wife.

I was a bit concerned the movie would overuse Baghuul based on the trailers. The move does, Baghuul definitely has more appearances, and is more clearly visible than in most of his appearances in the first film. However, it's not nearly as egregious as I feared it would be.

I could see this movie being edited down to great effect. I'd love to see a fan-cut of it at some point. It does add some interesting information about Baghuul. For some reason he's now a widely-known boogie-man figure, rather than the obscure mythological figure the first movie established, but that's the only real contradiction I caught. This movie is just barely below the “worth your time” bar. If anyone ever edited a 45-minute fan-cut focusing on Zach and Dylan, I preemptively highly recommend it.