Sinister 2
So I just wasted 97 minutes of my life watching this movie and I don’t wanna waste much more time on this review, so forgive me if it’s a bit sloppy. The movie opens like your typical everyday run-of-the-mill horror film: new family just moved into a big old dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere (you don’t have to think back too far to remember this exact scenario from The Conjuring [2013]).
It strays from your standard formulaic horror movie, however, in that it skips the slow burn—the premature false scares and all that boring stuff—and in the first five minutes we’re seeing real live ghosts. I guess we already saw all the buildup in Sinister 1, but I don’t know, I don’t actually remember the film. I think I saw it. Anyway, there’s this mother and her two sons, twins Dylan and Zach, aged 8-12 or thereabouts (where have we seen creepy twins in a horror movie before? Oh yeah, The Shining—“come play with us Tony!”), living in this big old house with a creepy church conveniently placed next to it, where the mother does her woodworking to make ends meet. Dylan sees dead people (The Sixth Sense) who show him creepy old super-8 (Super 8) home movies of families being systematically tortured/killed in various creative ways. I’m not gonna lie, these movies were pretty creepy if I do say so myself. It didn’t help matters any that I saw the movie alone in an empty theater. It even had me looking back over my shoulder from time to time to make sure the crazy prankster movie projectionist wasn’t creeping up behind me trying to prank me or worse. Also included are your standard ghost-in-the-mirror shots, and plenty of them, sure to send chills down your spine. I was actually a bit surprised by the sheer number of ghost reflection shots; I stopped counting after three.
No big names in this one folks, but there is a guy who kinda looks like Christian Bale (Batman Begins), whom you may recognize from Sinister 1 as the unnamed Deputy, now reprising his role, this time as Ex-Deputy So and So (I’m serious, that’s what he’s credited as. How’s that to pad your acting resume Keanu!) and a chick who sorta looks like Robin Wright (The Princess Bride). And I think maybe the boogie man—sorry, Bughuul, to give his proper German moniker—was portrayed by the illustrious Tommy Wiseau (The Room), but it’s hard to tell for certain. The twins are played by real-life twins (triplets, actually, according to IMDb trivia) Robert and Dartanian Sloan (I’m not making this up, his real name is Dartanian, I swear! “Fine, we can give two of them normal names, but I want at least one to be named after my favourite Dumas character”). I was pleasantly surprised to see the familiar face of John Beasley (TV’s The Soul Man), albeit in a brief but poignant role, who isn’t really that famous at all, but I kinda sorta know him personally, or at least met him twice or once, not to name drop.
Anyway, the movie had its moments, but all in all it was a disappointment, though I wasn’t expecting that much from it to begin with and I saw it on $5 movie night, so I guess I sorta broke even in the end. On the topic of the creepy-twins-and-a-mother-alone-in-a-house movie genre, one film I do hold high hopes for is the upcoming German horror Goodnight Mommy, the trailer for which looks strikingly similar to Sinister 2, only better in every way.
