Hardly sinister
The original ‘Sinister’ was in no way a perfect horror film, yet still it was a breath of fresh air. The sequel overindulges in the things that were not very great in the first place, like silly looking ghost-kids and hilarious boogieman character while adding nothing new or interesting. The Super 8 movies were arguably one of the best things in the original ‘Sinister’, but now even those feel silly. Maybe it’s just because the concept itself became old.
The first installment had a mystery, that played an integral role in it, but now it’s solved. We now know from the very start that the kids are the ones who gonna be the cause of the bad things. Even the ‘big twist’ is about who’s gonna be the killer: the kid who is somewhat likable or the one who’s an absolute dork. The original film had ‘innocence lost’ sort of thing in it, sort of a big reveal (even despite on the poster) and a grisly conclusion. The sequel has a generic happy ending with a generic jumpscare-cliffhanger at the very end. Oh yeah, jumpscares. There’s quite a lot of those here.
I wouldn’t say that ‘Sinister II’ is a bad film, it’s just painfully mediocre. It lacks subtleness, it’s full of annoying characters and it’s not interesting to watch. I guess, it was hard to expand the original story in a satisfying way, so maybe they shouldn’t have, or maybe they should have approached it in a completely different way.
