Sinister 2 wants to be a scare machine. It gets the machinery right. It fails to make any of it matter.
The 2015 horror film, directed by Ciarán Foy and written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, follows a former deputy named Ex-Deputy So & So as he investigates a string of killings tied to a malevolent deity named Bughuul. Alongside him is a boy named Dylan, who lives in a farmhouse with his twin brother Zach and their mother Courtney. Dylan sees dead children in his room and watches films of families being murdered. The house, the filmmakers suggest, is cursed.
The setup is simple and cruel. Courtney fled her abusive husband, Clint, and found a cheap rural dwelling for herself and her sons. Now Dylan is haunted, Zach is violent, and So & So is chasing a pattern that never quite resolves itself into terror. The film is built on a premise that could have been a tight, nasty thriller. Instead it becomes a slow-motion train wreck of jump scares, cliché, and a story that never earns its own dread.
Trailer, via Focus Features.
So & So’s Case
So & So arrives at the farmhouse with a theory: Bughuul is summoned through ritual sacrifice, and the pattern repeats. Every murder involves a family killed, children missing, and artwork showing the deity. That’s the whole story, really. A man walks into a house, tells everyone to stay put, and then spends the rest of the film proving that staying put is the worst thing anyone can do.
James Ransone returns from the first Sinister, and he brings a weary, hollow presence to the role. He is the only actor here who seems to understand that the script is broken. His scenes with Courtney, played by Shannyn Sossamon, carry the film’s rare moments of tension. She is desperate, afraid, and trapped. Their conversations about the house and the children who appear to Dylan are the closest the movie comes to genuine fear.
Dylan’s Nightmares
Dylan is the film’s entry point, and he is the character who should be terrified. He wakes from a nightmare about a family killed in a cornfield. He sees ghostly children who force him to watch films of murders. He refuses to watch another family die, and the children turn on him, saying he is not their real target.
The problem is that Dylan never feels like a real person. He is a vessel for the ghosts, a boy who sees things we are meant to fear. But the film never commits to what it means to be a child living with a monster in the house. The nightmares are described but rarely shown with any real weight. They are a trigger for the next scare, not a moment of dread.
Zach’s Violence
Zach is the other twin, and he is jealous of the attention Dylan gets from the ghost children. As the film progresses, Zach becomes increasingly violent. He attacks Dylan, and the film suggests that his anger is connected to the house’s curse. This is a promising thread. A brother turned against his sibling by a supernatural force should be chilling.
Instead, Zach’s violence is treated as a symptom, not a character. The film never explores why he hates his brother or what the house has done to him. It simply hands Zach a knife and lets him chase Dylan around the house. The climax, which involves Zach filming his family and spiking their drinks, is a cheap twist that does nothing to explain what came before it.
The House’s Curse
The farmhouse itself is the film’s central mystery. Families have died here before. Children have vanished. Artwork shows Bughuul. The house is a trap, and the film tells us as much in its tagline: “Some things you can’t unsee.”
But the film never builds a sense of dread around the house. It shows the rooms, the walls, the children, and then moves on. There is no lingering on a doorway, no slow tracking shot down a hallway, no sense that the house is watching back. The house is a container for the scares, not a character in its own right.
Professor Stromberg and the Radio
Professor Stromberg, played by Tate Ellington, owns a ham radio that belonged to Professor Jonas, who disappeared mysteriously. The radio activates during the film, and So & So orders Stromberg to destroy it. The device is supposed to be a key to understanding Bughuul. It connects the farmhouse to a Norwegian family from 1973 and to the ritual sacrifices that summon the deity.
This is the film’s best idea. A radio that speaks to the past, a device that links one murder to another across decades. It could have been the spine of the story. Instead it is a footnote. The radio appears, it activates, it is destroyed, and the film moves on. The connection between the Norwegian family and the American farmhouse is never made clear. The ritual sacrifices are mentioned but never explained.
The Jump Scares
Sinister 2 is a horror film, and horror films need scares. This one delivers them constantly. A child appears behind a door. A shadow moves across a wall. A figure stands in a window. The film is full of these moments, and they are effective in the moment. But they are also repetitive and cheap. A jump scare works when it is earned. Here it is earned by the fact that the film is about to scare you.
The film’s worst sin is that it never lets a scare breathe. It jumps, it cuts, it resets. The audience is never allowed to feel the aftermath of a scare. There is no lingering dread, no sense that the world has changed. There is only the next scare, and the next, and the next. The film becomes a series of shocks rather than a sustained experience of fear.
The Critical Reception
Sinister 2 was released on August 21, 2015. It grossed over $54 million against a reported budget of $10 million. That is a solid return on investment. But the film’s reception was harsh. Critics were blunt about what they disliked:
- The jump scares were too frequent and too similar.
- The horror clichés felt tired and recycled.
- The story was thin and unearned.
- The performances were adequate but buried under the chaos.
Ransone’s performance was singled out for praise, though even that was qualified. The film’s defenders noted that it had a strong premise and a talented cast. They were wrong. The premise is strong, and the cast is talented. Neither survives the script.
Comparing the Films
| Sinister (2012) | Sinister 2 (2015) | |
|---|---|---|
| Premise | A man finds a box of home movies showing real murders. | A deputy investigates a cursed farmhouse. |
| Central figure | A lawyer named Ellison | A deputy named So & So |
| Scare method | 8 mm film of snuff films | 16 mm film, vinyl records, ham radio |
| Tone | Psychological dread | Constant jump scares |
| Final score | Strong horror | Weak horror |
The table shows the difference clearly. Sinister 2 is weaker in nearly every category. Its premise is thinner, its scares are less inventive, and its tone is less controlled. The first film built dread slowly. This one throws scares at the screen and hopes one sticks.
The Verdict
Sinister 2 is a failure of ambition. It wanted to be a scary movie, and it delivered a series of shocks. It wanted to be a character study, and it gave us two brothers and a mother who never get a chance to feel real fear. It wanted to be a sequel, and it became a cash grab with a better cast than its predecessor.
The film is not without merit. Ransone is excellent, and Sossamon is effective. The premise is sound. But the execution is so broken that the good parts are swallowed whole. There is no pacing, no rhythm, no sense of escalation. The film just piles scares on top of each other until the audience stops caring.
Sinister 2 is a bad horror movie. It is not a terrible one, because there are moments of craft and moments of talent. But it is a bad one, and that is damning enough. It is a film that knows what it is doing and does it poorly. It is a film that could have been a tight, nasty thriller and chose instead to be a pile of scares.
The final score is 3.2 out of 10. That is a low mark, and it is deserved. This is a film that wastes its premise, its cast, and its audience’s time. It is a film that should have been shorter, sharper, and more committed to its own ideas. Instead it is a bloated, repetitive mess that never earns the fear it promises.
There is no saving grace to recommend. The film is not worth seeing for the scares, the performances, or the premise. It is worth avoiding, because it is a reminder of what happens when a horror film forgets that fear is a feeling, not a trigger.
Sinister 2 is a failure. It is a failure of writing, a failure of direction, a failure of ambition. It is a film that wanted to be a scare machine and became a broken one. It is a film that should have been left on the shelf. It is a film that deserves its reputation.
The score is 3.2 out of 10.
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