A young single mother with two boys is on the run so she moves into a house where a family was murdered right next to a church where a family was murdered, or something. Her children start seeing ghosts and one of the brothers starts watching murder tapes (of which there are plenty), like those in the first film. His brother gets jealous of that and the boy refuses to continue to watch the tapes. But it's okay, because ghosts decide they wanted the other brother, anyways. Ex-deputy so and so finds the family, falls in love with the mother, but alas, she has an evil abusive husband who finds them and takes them all back to live together and to abuse. Nobody can do anything about it because, of course, he's rich and controls all of the authorities. Deputy so and so goes to a scientist guy to find out some random information about the murderous demon who is also an artist. He comes back to rescue the family from a killer child. The killer child is consumed by the demon for failing to kill the family. Deputy, the mother, and the other brother get to a motel and then there's a jump-scare. Oh, and the abusive husband gets killed, but who cares about that jerk.
You can see this movie is awful right from the start. The first scene is just like in the first movie, only worse: it's no longer scary or new or surprising or has a cool eerie soundtrack. The comic relief character from the first movie is made the protagonist. He isn't made less annoying, which in the first movie was tolerable since he was just a secondary character. In this movie everyone is a secondary character: a not very bright mother, two annoying children who start as friends and then suddenly become enemies, a not very bright ex-deputy so and so, more annoying ghost children, an evil abusive father with no redeeming qualities, and an awkward scientist. We find out the characters' back stories through awkward exposition that fails to add any depth to them. It feels like the director told actors to just be very awkward in every scene, because it's endearing, I guess.
There's no coherent plot line, the story is full of dei ex machina and plot holes. It's just sloppy. For instance, in the first movie the murder tapes were clearly from different decades, in this one they just pulled a bunch of new tapes out of nowhere, with murders that seem to have been happening every weekend. Makes you wonder why only a halfwit ex-deputy could figure some kind of pattern out.
What about the scariness? It's bad jump-scares overload. And I like jump-scares in horror movies when they're done right, like in the first Sinister movie. In this one you can see them coming from a mile away and they're no longer scary. You're less scared of things that you can see clearly and in this movie there's no subtlety, as if they're worried that you won't notice how clever they are with their scares. It all just comes off as trying too hard: zooming in the bad CGI on the tapes, the demon popping out here and there, etc. Or, for example, in the first movie what made the tapes so eerie was in big part their soundtrack. You can see that the makers of the second movie got the idea - they added a record player to the projector with records that play "sinister" sounds, but it's so in your face that it just seems silly.
Overall, I do not recommend wasting your time on this movie. It isn't scary at all, child actors are bad and annoying, all the characters are awkward as hell and one-sided. 1/10
You can see this movie is awful right from the start. The first scene is just like in the first movie, only worse: it's no longer scary or new or surprising or has a cool eerie soundtrack. The comic relief character from the first movie is made the protagonist. He isn't made less annoying, which in the first movie was tolerable since he was just a secondary character. In this movie everyone is a secondary character: a not very bright mother, two annoying children who start as friends and then suddenly become enemies, a not very bright ex-deputy so and so, more annoying ghost children, an evil abusive father with no redeeming qualities, and an awkward scientist. We find out the characters' back stories through awkward exposition that fails to add any depth to them. It feels like the director told actors to just be very awkward in every scene, because it's endearing, I guess.
There's no coherent plot line, the story is full of dei ex machina and plot holes. It's just sloppy. For instance, in the first movie the murder tapes were clearly from different decades, in this one they just pulled a bunch of new tapes out of nowhere, with murders that seem to have been happening every weekend. Makes you wonder why only a halfwit ex-deputy could figure some kind of pattern out.
What about the scariness? It's bad jump-scares overload. And I like jump-scares in horror movies when they're done right, like in the first Sinister movie. In this one you can see them coming from a mile away and they're no longer scary. You're less scared of things that you can see clearly and in this movie there's no subtlety, as if they're worried that you won't notice how clever they are with their scares. It all just comes off as trying too hard: zooming in the bad CGI on the tapes, the demon popping out here and there, etc. Or, for example, in the first movie what made the tapes so eerie was in big part their soundtrack. You can see that the makers of the second movie got the idea - they added a record player to the projector with records that play "sinister" sounds, but it's so in your face that it just seems silly.
Overall, I do not recommend wasting your time on this movie. It isn't scary at all, child actors are bad and annoying, all the characters are awkward as hell and one-sided. 1/10