REVIEW: Sinister 2

Starring: James Ransone, Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Daniel Sloan, Dartanian Sloan, Lea Coco, Nicholas King.

Director: Ciaran Foy.

Released: August 21 (UK & Ireland)

A GROUP of possessed children, a ritual sacrifice, a remote house with a dark cellar, a bogeyman who gets his kicks out of surprise appearances. Boo!

This eclectic mix of cliche horror elements fails to blend in Sinister 2, a sequel to Scott Derrickson's 2012 supernatural motion picture.

The first film shockingly revealed the missing children were murdering their families. The follow-up relies on jump scares to compensate for a storyline that lacks any new or unexpected insights.

The central issue with Sinister 2 is that Bughuul, a formerly enigmatic demonic creature, has lost his mystery and thus his punch.

He was omnipresent in the tapes, photographs and shadows of the first Sinister film. Once it becomes clear in the sequel that he is only instructing the children, Bughuul is downgraded to a useless token character who lures, but never attacks.

It is his squad of possessed, pale-faced moppets who do the killing, the talking and, while they are at it, the scaring.

Unfortunately, observing the deadly process unfold from the perspective of these tormented youngsters does not ignite any fear - their appearances are too polished, fading in and out of thin air too smoothly to cause alarm.

Sinister 2 revolves around Ex-Deputy So & So (James Ransone), who discovers the latest location of a long sequence of family massacres orchestrated by Bughuul.

Intent on ending the bloodshed, So & So is shocked to find runaway mother Courtney Collins (Shannyn Sossamon) and her twins Dylan and Zach (Robert Daniel Sloan and Dartanian Sloan) inhabiting the creaky farmhouse.

Courtney's violent husband Clint (Lea Coco) becomes embroiled in the madness, Dylan is subjected to increasingly persistent nightly visitations and the ex-deputy chooses to stumble through any dark, haunted hallway in his vicinity, armed only with a torchlight and a vast array of frightened expressions.

Needless to say, characters hear suspicious noises in the dark and decide to check them out en masse.

Every time Sinister 2 is about to lose more momentum than its rocky storyline can afford, we see old footage of seemingly innocent home videos that suddenly take a deadly turn.

The recordings are disturbing and the characters' demises inventive, but they fail to supply an entire film with spine-tingling chills.

Director Ciaran Foy throws bloody rats, children with scythes and burning crucifixes into the mix in a vain attempt to inject a dose of fear. It is no use.

Sinister 2 relies too heavily on Bughuul's predictable jump scares, all of which are accompanied by an unsettling yet repetitive soundtrack.

One has to be blindfolded, comatose and wearing earplugs not to see what is coming.

4/10 

Alexander Santema