Nigel P For a story about a bereaved mother with two young sons, this could have been a lot worse. I have a low tolerance for bratty depictions of troubled youngsters in films like this, and the often dewy-eyed mother's intense efforts in trying to 'understand' them. Luckily, that kind of drippery is in short supply here, with Director Ciaran Foy clearly more concerned with horror atmospherics.For any unacquainted with the original, it is difficult not to notice how little explanation there is for events here. In some ways it is a good thing that we head straight into the thrust of the narrative, but in others it must be frustrating playing 'the long game' in order for newcomers to be enlightened about the ongoing story.The main protagonist is Bughuul from the earlier film, who looks very much like the lead character in Top Cow's 'The Darkness' comics. He makes surprisingly brief appearances here – such restraint is commendable, although it would have been nice to see a little more of him. Perhaps nice is the wrong word.There are several story strands here, but sadly, only the evil ghostly children's growing influence on young Zack (Dartanian Sloan) has any sense of progression. Other interesting elements, like Zack becoming the bully his father Clint (Lea Coco) was, and the father's abusive behaviour towards the likable Courtney - as well as her relationship with the 'Ex-Deputy' - are plot-threads presented more or less in isolation amidst everything else, and they remain severely under-developed and subsequently not as interesting as they deserve to be.Despite the convincing acting, I feel that too much reliance is placed on the young cast members. It is too much to ask that scenes of such horrific 'weight' to them should be adequately conveyed by the juniors.The highlight for me here is Tomandandy's amazing, doom-laden score. Throughout, the music adds an extra layer of intensity and dark foreboding. The soundtrack is available to buy and makes for pretty unsettling listening on its own.

blee0744 The current IMDb rating of 5.3 is at least 3 points higher than the movie deserves. The budget for the move is shown is $10 million, and I am willing to bet that none of it went toward writing a decent script. And I say this in spite of the fact that I have a very low quality threshold when it comes to horror movies.

mattwilde123 Modern horror sequels are often failures. I thought that as the first film wasn't great that I wouldn't be as disappointed if this film turned out to be bad. I was wrong, Compared to this, the first instalment was a masterpiece and this made me realise how it was successful at achieving its goals sometimes.'Sinister 2' was quite scary in places. No doubt, the cinema playing the film super loud helped elevate the jump scares though. The creepy depictions of murder in the first film were crazily overdone in this.The screenplay was terrible. The main story was stale and predictable and the characters were unsympathetic and cold.The performances were poor all over this film in particularly the ghost children seemed like they were performing a rubbish school pantomime.Overall, I can't be too surprised with what I thought of this film but, sadly, I can see sequels for this being churned out more and more in the future.

view_and_review This movie was absolute rubbish. I'd be generous if I were to call it a scary movie because it was far from that. It was a drama with some scary parts--if that much.Buguul is after new prey and he's found them. A mother has ran away from her extremely abusive ex-husband and she has her two sons in tow. One of these two sons is chosen for the deed of offing his family. The majority of the movie is exposition about the mom, her ex, and the one ex machina character that is trying to prevent the next massacre. It is so bogged down with drama and visible ghosts that you wonder if they're even trying for horror. I contend that they were not. I think they figured they wouldn't be able to make a good horror sequel anyway so why try. Let's just use the same title, the same antagonist and somewhat of the same plot, throw in a couple of very unlikeable characters and then people will lap it up. This movie was lazy, over the top and just plain hard to watch. If everyone was killed in this drivel I would have been more inclined to applaud. There was no mystery to uncover, there were no characters that were beloved and there was nothing scary about this movie. It was sinister what they did to the viewers.