Sinister 2

Sinister 2
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ciaran Foy
Produced by	Jason Blum Scott Derrickson Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
Written by	C. Robert Cargill Scott Derrickson
Starring	James Ransone Shannyn Sossamon
Music by	Tomandandy
Cinematography	Amy Vincent
Edited by	Michael Trent Timothy Alverson
Production companies	Alliance Films Automatik Entertainment Blumhouse Productions Entertainment One IM Global Tank Caterpillar, Inc.
Distributed by	Gramercy Pictures[1] Focus Features
Release date	August 21, 2015 (2015-08-21)
Running time	97 minutes[2]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10 million[3][4]
Box office	$54.1 million[5]

Sinister 2 (also known as Sinister II) is a 2015 American supernatural horror film directed by Ciaran Foy and written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. It is a sequel to the 2012 film Sinister and it stars James Ransone, reprising his role from the original film, and Shannyn Sossamon as a mother whose sons are tormented by the ghostly children taken by Bughuul at their rural farmhouse. It also stars Robert Daniel Sloan, Dartanian Sloan, Lea Coco, and Tate Ellington in supporting roles.

Sinister 2 was released in the United States on August 21, 2015, by Gramercy Pictures and Focus Features. The film received negative reviews from critics, with criticism for its jump scares, horror cliches and story, while Ransone's performance received some praise. The film grossed over $54 million against its reported budget of $10 million.

Plot[edit]

A home movie is shown depicting a family being hung up like scarecrows with sacks over their heads in a cornfield and burned alive. It is revealed to be the nightmare of nine-year-old Dylan Collins, who is squatting in a rural farmhouse next to a deconsecrated Lutheran church, with his twin brother, Zach, and their mother, Courtney. The family is on the run from an abusive husband, Clint.

Dylan is visited nightly by a group of ghost children, led by an older boy named Milo Jacobs, who once lived in the house. Milo and the other children coerce Dylan to watch "home movies" of families being murdered in various savage ways, such as being eaten alive by alligators, buried alive up to their necks in the snow on Christmas Day, and being electrocuted in a kitchen.

A former sheriff's deputy, now a private investigator, is researching the murders connected to Bughuul and burning down the homes where each murder took place before another family can move into them, including the house where Ellison Oswalt and his family were murdered. He arrives at the farmhouse to destroy it, but realizes Courtney and her sons are living there. He tells Courtney he is there to investigate the church on the property where a gruesome murder of a minister and his family took place.

Clint, Courtney's estranged husband, shows up at the farmhouse with the police to try to take the boys but leaves after the Deputy threatens them, warning them that they need a court order. The Deputy reveals that he was arrested as a suspect for the murder of the Oswalts, but was cleared of the charge, and he was fired from the police for releasing classified information to Ellison.

Courtney wants to leave with the boys, but the Deputy advises her not to, knowing that each of the murders connected to Bughuul occurred only after the families had left the homes where the previous murders had occurred. Courtney invites him to stay, and the two develop a budding romance.

The Deputy meets with a professor who has come into possession of a ham radio that belonged to Professor Jonas from the previous film, who has mysteriously disappeared. The professor said the ham radio first belonged to a Norwegian family who was murdered in 1973. He plays a recording of a young girl screaming, "Bughuul can't hear me over your yelling, Mom!" as she kills her family. The Deputy deduces that Bughuul exclusively targets the children of the families, and orders the professor to destroy the ham radio.

Zach becomes jealous of the ghost children who visit Dylan, and insists on having their attention, but Milo rejects him. The children show Dylan the video of the church murders, which are revealed to be done by Milo. He nailed his family to the floor by their wrists and put a rat on each person’s stomach. He then put metal bowls over the rats and placed hot coals on top of the bowls, which forced the rats to escape by eating through the victims. After Dylan refuses to watch the last movie, the children turn their attention to Zach and abandon Dylan, saying he is not their real target.

Clint arrives with the court order and Courtney is forced to leave with Zach and Dylan. The Deputy drives to Clint's home to warn them about the danger, but Clint beats him up. The next day, Zach, as directed by the ghost children, films the family playing golf. That night, Dylan contacts the Deputy for help.

Courtney, Dylan, and Clint are drugged and hung on scarecrow posts with sacks over their heads in the cornfield. A possessed Zach lights Clint on fire and films him as he burns to death. Just as Zach is about to light Dylan on fire, the Deputy hits Zach with his car. He frees Courtney and Dylan and they flee into the cornfield. However, Zach survived being hit and cuts off the fingers of the Deputy's left hand with a sickle.

Inside the home, the ghost children try to help Zach find them. Just as Zach is about to kill Courtney and Dylan, the Deputy manages to break the camera, thwarting Zach's home movie and breaking the cycle. Zach tries to find another camera, but he is shamed by the ghost children for failing to kill his family. Without an object to influence living children and earn souls for Bughuul, they are now trapped in the spirit realm. Bughuul appears and places his hand on Zach's shoulder, causing Zach to decay and burst into flames. The house catches on fire as the Deputy, Courtney, and Dylan escape.

Later, while collecting his things to leave with Courtney and Dylan, the Deputy finds the unharmed ham radio in his motel room and the ghost children begin speaking through it.

Cast[edit]

Production[edit]

Development[edit]

A sequel to Sinister was announced to be in the works in March 2013, with Scott Derrickson in talks to co-write the script with C. Robert Cargill, but not to direct, as Derrickson did on the first film.^[6]

On 17 April 2014, it was announced that Ciaran Foy would direct the film, and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Charles Layton, Xavier Marchand, and Patrice Théroux would executive produce the sequel with eOne Entertainment.^[7]

Filming[edit]

Principal photography began on August 19, 2014, in Chicago. It was shot for six weeks in locations including St. Anne and outside the village of Grant Park.^[8]

Marketing[edit]

The trailer for the film was uploaded on April 9, 2015, with the song "Hush, Hush, Hush, Here Comes the Bogeyman" being a main piece in the trailer. The song depicts the boogieman as a coward.

Release[edit]

On May 20, 2015, Focus Features relaunched their Gramercy Pictures label for action, horror, and science-fiction films. Sinister 2 was one of Gramercy's new releases.^[9]

Home media[edit]

Sinister 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 12, 2016.

Reception[edit]

Box office[edit]

The movie grossed $27,740,955 domestically and $26,363,270 internationally.^[5] The film earned $850,000 in ticket sales from late-night showings on Thursday and by the end of its first week, the movie earned $10,542,116, lower than its predecessor which pulled in $18,007,634.

Critical response[edit]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film negative reviews and only 16% of the critics enjoyed it. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sinister 2 has a few ingredients that will be familiar to fans of the original; unfortunately, in this slapdash second installment, none of them are scary anymore."^[10] Metacritic gives the film a score of 32 out of 100, based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".^[11] CinemaScore announced that audiences gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.^[12]

IGN awarded it a score of 1 out of 10, saying, "Sinister 2 is an abysmal follow-up to its predecessor. At least that film knew that less is more. And less is scarier."^[13] MoviePilot also awarded the film 1 out of 10, calling it "one of the worst horror films of the last few years."^[14] The scene in which trapped rats have to eat through a victim's body was inspired by a similar scene in the 1977 Nazi exploitation film La Bestia in calore.

Future[edit]

Potential crossover sequel[edit]

Prior to the release of Insidious: The Last Key, Jason Blum stated that a crossover film between Sinister and the Insidious series had previously been in development, tentatively entitled Insinister, and that he personally believed it had potential for re-entering it, stating that "we're going to cross our worlds at some point".^[15]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Sinister 2 at IMDb
• Sinister 2 at Box Office Mojo
• Sinister 2 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sinister 2 at Metacritic