Black Phone 2 (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The Black Phone was, in my opinion, over-hyped and hasn't really stood the test of time, even in only four years. I liked it well enough, but repeat viewings have made its substantial plot holes increasingly difficult to swallow. Some movies are just meant to be seen once and enjoyed as such; Derrickson's mastery of suggestive suspense and brutal scares is too profound for him to make a mediocre cinematic experience. However, the story was simplistic, messy, and too vague for its own good. Perhaps that's why Ethan Hawke's villainous Grabber character has maintained its interest: he's enigmatic enough to be upsetting. I think of him the way I think of Michael Myers: sure, he's scary enough, but it's not until he should be dead and rises again anyway that we really lock into the horror Laurie Strode is up against.

When a sequel was announced, I blanched. Joe Hill only wrote a single short story, and that was adapted into the first film; what could happen next, with the Grabber dead? But I'm glad I reserved judgment, because Black Phone 2, despite its terrible title, took me on a wild ride that scared me, provoked my curiosity in refreshing ways, and eventually helped me think of its predecessor in a kinder light. That's pretty remarkable these days, with strung-along sequels and remakes that never try to do something really weird and make it work.

I won't recount much plot here, because piecing it together is part of the fun to be had, but Black Phone 2 relocates Finney and Gwen, now considerably older, to a Christian camp alongside a mountainous lake in their home state of Colorado. Led by Gwen's visions of their dead mother's time working there, the kids (and Gwen's new boyfriend) arrive amidst a terrible snowstorm, isolating them in cabins along with the four camp staffers stationed there. Gwen's visions worsen, and Finney receives calls via the camp's decommissioned payphone: the Grabber, long dead, has figured out a way to seek revenge on Finney for killing him. The logic is a bit unclear, but he's haunting a site of his own early murders, reinforcing the psychic connection between the Grabber and the kids through their mother, whose unwelcome visions allowed her to see his victims and eventually drove her mad (and to suicide, as was presumed in the previous film). 

Less like Michael Myers and more like Freddy Krueger, this film swings into directions I was not at all expecting, and Derrickson's aesthetic choices in the first film are doubled down on here, making his earlier choices make more sense. For example, the first film features intercuts of what appear to be Super 8mm footage indicating the abduction/murder scenes of what we know to be missing persons; it's utilizing a sort of mockumentary/found footage technique for no reason because of course no one was filming those crimes. Yet in this film, it's finally clear that that technique is simply a visual cue as to how Gwen's visions appear: grainy, blurry, awkwardly spliced together. Whereas I thought it was, before, a cheap ploy capitalizing on Derrickson's terrifying successes in Sinister (which it may well have been), now I see it as a suitably reasonable approach to non-anachronistic visual representation that the character herself would be familiar with.

Regardless, the Grabber's crimes are no longer so pedestrian, and here he's got a nasty axe to grind. Literally. The bloody violence of this film had me gagged, and I mean that literally as well, because it was not what I expected. Hawke returns, and this time he's not quite as chillingly spooky; nor is he as sexually suggestive, which I both liked and wish we had some closure about. His first outing was like Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates: performative and cerebral, rather femme and quietly disturbed. This time, he's full-on psycho, an edge of diabolic malevolence to his gravelly voice, launching headfirst into rooms from shadowy corners and taking broad swings with his weapons of choice. He's not going to trick or toy with his victims now. He's going to dismember them. 

Surreal nightmare logic won't work for everyone, but this movie worked for me on that front. I also liked that Gwen takes more of a leading role here, and the actors (excellent already in the first film) deliver shockingly mature performances yet again. Finney has the thankless position of trying to become a man with the only role model of his father (Jeremy Davies, who returns in a diminished capacity here), who is only tenuously no longer alcoholic and abusive. Naturally, Finney has some junk still to sort through mentally, and he's numbing his pain and his life as a result. Gwen's visions this time are more brutal, and so is her treatment by the Grabber, making the nature of violence in this film a really cool counterpoint to the first: then, it was suggestive, abductive, and sexual, whereas now, it's explicit, bodily, and psychic. 

This is still a big-budget slasher film, even with its ghostly elements, and it doesn't all cohere the way we might want. Rather than allowing the kids' dynamics to breathe naturally, they're forced into conversations that reveal key things laid out as breadcrumbs by the writers, building to a contrived climax that only works as the sum of these crumbs. The camp staffers, including Demian Bichir and Arianna Rivas, are mostly forgettable, only there to allow the kids chances to explain what's happening and to spur them on to make tough decisions and help with physical tasks, such as searching a frozen lake for bodies stashed there more than twenty years prior. 

Crazy? Yeah, and that's the kind of weird thing that a film like this should have worked out in, well, workshop. Derrickson is too good to let a weird screenplay get in his way, but this story (like the previous one) could have used some serious help in development. But if you're willing to let plot holes and strange logical jumps be what they are, Black Phone 2 has boons in store. Terrifyingly choreographed and edited sequences turn nightmarish visions into impossible realities, shifting between visual modes as we watch the Grabber viciously tearing apart his victims while, in waking cuts, bodies of teenagers are flung about with spurts of blood. Derrickson and his cinematographer milk the snowy, mountainous landscape for all its worth, often using window panes and ice as our actual frame into their world. And while Derrickson's penchant for religious content isn't gone here -- Gwen still talks to Jesus for help in her wonderfully crass way, and the Grabber's mask is about as demonic as you can get -- it does feel earned and grounded in ways we so rarely see (these are not idolatrous possession films bogged down in Catholic imagery or emotionally manipulative Warren-esque normative families). This works surprisingly well in a film that basically turns a one-off spooky story into a full-fledged supernatural slasher franchise. Where else has the Grabber killed kids? Will he go on to haunt those places, too?

The Black Phone (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Thank goodness Scott Derrickson chose to bless us with another horror film. Sinister is, in my not-quite-humble opinion, perhaps the scariest movie I've ever seen; The Exorcism of Emily Rose is one of the smartest and most beautiful horror movies I've ever seen. After Deliver Us from Evil, Derrickson joined the MCU and I feared we'd lose the raw genius to big-budgeted committee-written work. But the man still knows what he's doing and clearly loves making movies like this. It's not on par with his scariest or most provocative work, but it's certainly a scary time at the cinema! This one feels much more emotionally resonant than the writer-director's previous work; it's also his most hopeful horror film to date.

Based on a short story by Joe Hill (son of Stephen King), The Black Phone feels much like other work by the esteemed writer from Maine. It's got the '70s nostalgic elements, the oddball outcast kids, schoolyard bullying, a very real-world monster, and some ambiguously supernatural elements that provide both dread and awe. The story concerns Finney and Gwen, siblings who live in a suburb near Denver with their widower father, an abusive alcoholic (played by character actor Jeremy Davies). They go to school and navigate their way between bullies -- although the younger Gwen tends to be a bit more protective in those instances -- before heading home, and it's not always clear which they dread more. But when Finney's best friend Bruce disappears, not even the journey to school or back home is a safe time for the kids.

Bruce has been kidnapped by The Grabber, a mysterious criminal in the neighborhood, who has been abducting teenage boys in broad daylight. A new age bogeyman, he primarily operates out of a black windowless van labeled for his part-time magician work. Dubious as that occupation may be, he does cut quite a menacing figure for the first third of the film, seen primarily in the distance or through what appears to be Super 8 film reels, often accompanied by a bundle of black balloons. He looks like a cross between Pennywise and the Babadook, in all black except for a white, garish face and tall black top hat. He's played by Ethan Hawke, in a rare turn for the actor as a villain (this is his second time this year, after Moon Knight), and despite my general misgivings about the actor, he's extraordinary here. We don't even really see him for almost half the movie, and when we do he's almost always covered by a mask or parts of a mask that appear interchangeable, for different faces. He's still and calculated and calm (for the most part), and even rather effete, which is annoying but accurate to the social fears of the time; he is given no real backstory or sympathy by the screenplay, so he's just a terrifying evil man. Curiously, despite his limp wristed mannerisms, the film stops short of declaring that he's molesting or abusing these adolescent boys. But, like Freddy in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, it's clear what his sins are even when it's carefully never mentioned.

Gwen sees psychic visions of the Grabber and his crimes, and when she tells the detectives about it, her father is approached at work for questioning and later takes out his embarrassment on Gwen's backside violently. He should be kinder, because before long Finney is taken, too. Held in a soundproof basement, bare of all but a dingy toilet and tattered mattress, Finney immediately starts looking for a way out. The only window is a little too high and is blocked by bars. The massive door is bolted shut. And the wall-mounted black telephone isn't connected to any lines. The Grabber occasionally feeds him, but he's clearly not going to be eating well. Gwen prays fervently for help in navigating her visions and to see where her brother is being held. Finney isn't idle, but his situation seems pretty hopeless. When the phone starts to ring, though, things really get weird.

It may not strike audiences as weird in the age of cell phones, but to have a clunker like the titular phone start ringing in a nasty bare cellar is plenty creepy on its own. Add to it the disembodied voices of Bruce and the other kidnapped and murdered boys, and it's a miracle Finney doesn't lose his marbles. But the voices, overcoming some vague forgetfulness that apparently accompanies death, seem eager to help Finney escape, and they get him to work on multiple projects, including pulling a wire out from the walls, tearing off the window bars, and digging a hole in front of the toilet. When the Grabber begins playing "games" with Finney -- see, I told you he's a pervert -- and leaves the door unlocked, the phone rings to warn Finney that the games are tests, and failure means death. Bravery will mean death.

The nostalgic element is present in the film's mise en scène, of course, but also in its presentation. Much as he used Super 8 film in Sinister, here the spliced "archive" footage depicts many of the crimes happening. It also, interestingly, connects to Gwen's visions, something I would have liked a little more clarity regarding. Along that line of thematic thinking, there is a lot here regarding kid-to-kid support systems, cycles of parental/adult abuse of kids, and the bonds of youth forged by trauma. Even the Grabber, fey as he might sometimes be, could also be described as childlike in some ways, suggesting perhaps that his psychosexual development was arrested as an adolescent (I think this theory falls apart in the film's climactic confrontation, but it's debatable for sure!). I told you this wasn't far from Stephen King's oeuvre. 

It's the kid actors who deserve the praise for this film though. Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw are just stunning young performers, in full command of their craft while headlining in roles that are at once thankless and demanding. Apart from them, the film is suitably thrilling, deeply chilling, and pretty fun in a macabre sort of way. They imbue the plethora of drama with believable heart, turning even the most horrific of moments into genuine tragedy or panic, sometimes simply falling silent under the burden of parental abuse and survival while sitting together. And that's what makes this horror film so emotionally involving and satisfying.

It Chapter Two (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

Sometimes it's best to stick with the basics. After a fabulous first outing, I was so excited for the finale. Rumors were flying about its length, its depth, its horror. And while the new film does indeed deliver on these fronts -- it's a hell of a lot of fun, surprisingly emotional, and spooky to boot -- it also suffers from unnecessary changes from the source material, awkward pacing, an undercooked screenplay, and a terrible title.

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. We see the infamous, pulled-from-the-headlines opening scene of the novel in which Adrian Mellon, a gay man enjoying the Derry carnival (but apparently not enjoying Meg Ryan's hair), is brutally attacked by local bigots. The camera, thankfully, doesn't shy away from the assault, and we're reintroduced to Derry with a bang -- rather more of a crunch as the bullies punch and kick Adrian. It's a deeply disturbing scene, watching the asthmatic victim gasping for air before he is thrown into the river. Scenes like this -- in which the townspeople of Derry are demonstrably as evil as (perhaps more evil than) Pennywise -- are what make the book so memorable and horrifying. Unfortunately, these are also the hardest to capture on film, where the bogeyman is the moneymaker.

But, though this opening made me wonder how violent It Chapter Two would be, it's about as brutal as the movie gets. Sure, there's a vicious assault on the adult Beverly by her husband, there's Stan's sudden suicide, but the film really skims the surface of the real horrors lurking in Derry. Instead, the film tries to plant one foot in these physical dangers and the other in a pseudo-psychological world of perception, memory, and trauma. While arguably designed in the spirit of the novel (flashbacks and memories flood into adult consciousness in sudden and sometimes unexpected ways), the bizarre marriage of youth and maturity, of memory and reality, make the horror here less rooted in the body and more in the mind.

Thus we have what amounts to a madcap comedy, but in the horror genre. A parade of psychos and freaks and aggressively weird imagery floods the screen for nearly three hours, making the film an exercise in endurance for the audience. It's also an exercise in parsing the often oblique editing: we get many scenes with the kid-versions of the characters, but it's not always clear if it's a real memory, a perceived memory, or perhaps simply a hallucination brought on by panic, fear, and IT.

And, frankly, this film would have worked just fine relying solely on the adults. I understand the thematic importance of working through trauma, but we would have understood that because this is a sequel. We don't need to be constantly bashed over the head with new scenes of childhood terror at the hands of Pennywise -- that's what the whole first movie was about! (And I was especially irked that the new kiddo scenes are not based on the text anyway.) Rather, we could have had a totally adult movie that included more adult scares: Pennywise the second time around should be able to scare the adults as much as he had the children, but this movie makes it seem as though the adults are only scared because they remember him being terrifying.

A final complaint: the damn script is so romanticized (and torn between impulses and focus points) it's hard to really take the movie on its own terms because -- after only one viewing, admittedly -- I don't know what those terms are. The first chapter (God, I hate the "chapter" designation in the title, did I mention?) was a straightforward coming-of-age story that dealt with those horrors. Great. That makes sense. This time around, you'd think the Losers are either a) still coming of age, or b) aged and working with age-appropriate horrors. Instead we get c) a strange mix of the two, with almost none of the book's deep knowledge of adult issues rooted in childhood trauma. What do I mean? Let's go....

Henry Bowers becomes a random madman tossed into two or three scenes to add a scare, but we are given virtually no insight into his story, his character, or his own trauma. Pennywise himself is a very different character here, preying on emotional instability and desperation more than fear itself; at one point, he even describes himself as having "missed" the Losers in a strange masochistic monologue. Bill is a clear stand-in for Stephen King himself, who makes a sizable cameo, but his wife is notably absent from the proceedings; Beverly's husband similarly disappears after his early scene; these changes make the Losers appear still childlike, not in real adult relationships. Similarly, Richie takes on what is essentially Eddie's character in the book, that is, that he's gay and been closeted his whole life. While this would seem to act as a nice mirror to the opening hate crime, Richie of course does not get to fulfill his apparent lifelong crush on Eddie because (SPOILER ALERT) Eddie dies at the end. Then again, no version of this story was ever meant to have a happy ending.

*Speaking of queerness, I just have to add that this film is pretty queer. One lovely flashback hints a bit more at Richie's queerness. While I was bothered at first that they switched the closet case from Eddie to Richie, I think I like this better: they really made it work with Richie's caustic humor, and then it pairs nicely with Eddie's mama's-boy-ness. But perhaps the most unexpected and fabulous scene in the movie comes from Richie's confrontation with Pennywise on the Derry green space. With the hyper-masculine statue of Paul Bunyan on one side and the hyper-feminine cheerleaders practicing their routine on the other, Richie is caught in the middle, watching Pennywise floating toward him under an upside-down balloon pyramid singing about his "secret". Wow. It's an amazing high-camp moment of pure frisson, heightened by the hint that Derry passerby can also see the proceedings (they freeze and watch in the background).

Perhaps the two most egregious oversights I see in this romanticized script, however, concern Stan and Derry itself. First, of course, it's Stan's death that first horrifies the adult Losers. But by the film's denouement, we learn that Stan wrote letters to his friends letting them know he sacrificed himself partly due to fear but mostly to unite them into a common purpose in confronting Pennywise. What? That's on par with 13 Reasons Why levels of glorifying suicide. The whole point should be that Pennywise's horror was so traumatic that Stan couldn't bear the idea of returning. And then there's the town of Derry, so wicked and corrupt, which escapes totally unscathed by the end of this movie, lit in warm tones and a slight Hallmark-channel-esque haze in a final skyward shot. Again, what? In the novel, the town is mostly flooded in yet another cataclysmic event, as the psychic battle between the Losers and Pennywise basically explodes the sewer system and overloads the canal: the shit Derry doled out is returned in typical King fashion. I wanted some comeuppance, dammit!

Despite my irritations, this movie (I'm not using that title again) is thoroughly entertaining. A spectacular cast delivers on all fronts, and I found myself crying as much as gasping as they faced their fears. The movie is filled with lovely genre Easter eggs, most notably to The Shining and The Thing. Even the climactic battle, filled with some eye-popping and mind-bending visuals a la Mysterio in this summer's MCU flick, doesn't disappoint, and the Pennywise spider makes a vast improvement on its 1990 miniseries counterpart.

There is so much packed into this movie that I'll need to go again. And I'll hope, too, for a supercut of both parts with the much-teased deleted scenes added back in. (I heard they filmed the burning of the Black Spot and perhaps other Derry disasters, and I'm so ready for them all.)

Captive State (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Rupert Wyatt's latest flick is Captive State, a bizarre experiment that may not work for some audiences but works hard to get you thinking.

After a brief prologue in which two boys are orphaned when alien invaders strike, we get a whole lot of exposition before the plot really begins. Essentially, the aliens have taken over the world, assaulting the cities and setting up, well, captive states. After a period of nine years, the world is a very different place; the longsuffering city of Chicago sets the scene of this film. A central area has been razed in each occupied city, and the alien leaders live underground, allowing their human goons to run daily affairs. As the aliens have disarmed and demilitarized Earth, they rule with total impunity.

It's all really nothing special, and a lot of the ideas are vaguely hinted at by the extremely limited dialogue. Besides the opening credit mash-up of media voices and news headlines, there is almost no exposition in the film. We don't know much about the aliens, who appear briefly and look like large puppets with tendrils that harden into urchin-esque spikes when aroused (word choice?). They seem to be smart in addition to their physical danger, as they have confiscated all digital devices and are working to wipe them, uploading the data to some mysterious end. Interestingly, despite their totalitarian regime that has earned them the nickname "Legislators," they seem to be well-supported by the general populace. Chicago may look rough in the greyscale movie, but unemployment is almost nonexistent and the economy is strong.

The lack of real information characterizes this movie as a profound example of cerebral indie work. Somewhat entertaining but mostly confusing, we get carried along trying to piece together the tiny bits of plot and characters we know. I suppose a repeat viewing would help, but ultimately we're not meant to know much. Why? Because the movie is really about a widespread resistance movement, guerrillas planning a massive strike against their oppressors. Everything is layered in double-speak and hints both vague and blunt; characters are pawns who we never really understand or appreciate but who nevertheless are admirable somehow. It doesn't help that the immensely talented cast is about as eclectic and random as the aggregate limbs of Frankenstein's monster; John Goodman and Vera Farmiga play as if in a spy thriller, Kevin Dunn as if in a police procedural, Ben Daniels and Ashton Sanders in a sci-fi action flick.

Despite appreciating the film for doing the whole alien invasion thing in a different, grounded, gritty way, I can't help but be disappointed by the mess of the whole thing. Blurry, shaky, dark cinematography and frenzied, non-sequitur editing do nothing to help our comprehension of the already secretive tale. And while I love the social commentary and heady ideas, they never really coalesce into a cohesive whole. Case in point: the rule of the Legislators (and why do they have that name? Do they actually make laws, or just demands?) is marked by demilitarization even though they themselves are crazy violent, a fierce love of country even though the whole world has been overrun, a theocratic religious fervor that doesn't explain the brainwashing of the common people. We see a pep rally of sorts near the climax, when "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been rewritten to praise the aliens, and everyone is happy as hamsters.

It's all interesting and cool -- if not very fun -- but I feel the same way about Captive State that I did about Hotel Artemis. Style and novelty are cool, but if there is so incredibly little substance that we are bewildered more than inspired or even entertained, it's just disappointing. If you want a great horror flick about alien invasion in an urban setting, watch Cloverfield. If you want a great sci-fi thriller about conspiracy to overthrow an oppressive regime, watch Rogue One.

Gemini (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

When a Hollywood starlet is found murdered, suspicion falls on her assistant.

That's about it in terms of plot, with the exception of a delightful little twist of an ending you can smell coming at least 30 minutes before. But the joys of Gemini lie not in a densely plotted mystery, thick characterizations, nor even much violence (or, for that matter, speed). Instead, this is the fairly rare neo-noir that is as classical as it is nouveau, as slow as it is engrossing, and as gorgeous as it is pretty.

We start with upside-down images of Los Angeles and a purplish sky, an atmospheric choice that perfectly sets the stage for the drama to come. Beautiful young leads are led by Zoë Kravitz as a young Heather, up-and-coming actress and social media icon, distracted in maneuvering out of a project she does not want to do. In the first sequence alone she (and we) encounter no less than four individuals who have motive to, well, at this point, strongly dislike Heather. Though distressed and apparently concerned enough about her own safety to ask her assistant Jill (played by Lola Kirke) for a gun, Heather remains calm in demeanor.

This informs the film as a whole. A dim film awash in bluesy music and purpley colors, we enter a world of dreams and celebrity where everything is face value and if it's not beautiful it doesn't belong. Interestingly, the characters seem most concerned not by murder itself, nor even the threat of it, but rather by surveillance and voyeurism; the first physical indication of a threat to Heather is in a fan who approaches her in a restaraunt, looking a bit too much like her idol, taking photos and asking deeply personal questions in a totally inappropriate fashion. Of course, this encounter happens in a trendy location, decorated to be hip and popular (if also overstylized and gaudy), where appetizers are aptly and repeatedly called "apps".

Given the title Gemini, it is worth noting too that the film engages head-on with all these themes through the device of doubling. Much like the Dioscuri Castor and Pollux, the two leading women are a nearly perfect pair, complete with shared fashion and home, mutual servitude and favor, dubious sexuality, all while one is famous and the other thrust unwillingly into the spotlight. I was reminded more than once of Ingrid Goes West with its creepy vibes and acute attention to bougie female millennial life. Questions of individuality, identity, and reality itself revolve in vague and unanswerable orbit around this tale of appropriated fame and inauthenticity.

And while it by no means complicates these ideas -- think of the possibilities of its racial and sexual dynamics -- Gemini knows full well what it's about. Not subverting or even really commenting. Simply depicting in an artful way, and suggesting that a cultural phenomenon (youthful fame mediated by media) deserves interrogation.

Oh, and John Cho is severely underused as the detective. That's all.

IMDb: Gemini (2018)

Sinister 2 (2015)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Meh.

I really wanted to like this movie. I loved the first one, and though the premise was never going to be really dynamic in a sequel, I still had high hopes, especially when I learned that Scott Derrickson was still helping out. But he really should have directed this one, too.

Maybe that's not fair. Director Ciaran Foy (whom I had never heard of) does a decent job with keeping the dread looming above. But that hardly makes a film worthwhile these days, and it puts a horror sequel six feet under by default. With maybe three exceptions, the jump-scares are predictable and less than chilling. That said, I think we need to make a clearer distinction between "scary movies" and horror films. This picture is horror, through and through, simply in its thematic elements. If you saw the first, you know it's a contemporary re-imagining of Children of the Corn in a different setting, where the children become enamored of a demonic figure who entices them to sacrifice their families and join him in a ghostly dimension. While good artists can usually expound and elaborate on a rich concept like this, they didn't much here.

Don't get me wrong: it's not a "bad" film. There are some lovely choices that I should probably applaud. First, centering the story on Ex-Deputy So & So (James Ransone) is definitely a wining point, and a counterpart in Shannyn Sossamon was a brilliant choice. They have some lovely character moments, partly due to the nice dialogue in their more intimate scenes as well as on their own. It's pretty obvious that Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill (also from the first film) have their hearts with this duo, and it allows for a lot of warm feelings in an otherwise heavy picture.

The central gimmick of this franchise -- that of children murdering their families in imaginative and graphic ways and filming the crime as an homage to their deity -- is chilling, but has largely lost its efficacy in a sequel. While watching those sequences is no less horrifying (I heard at least two groans from other audience members), it is not particularly scary anymore. Here we go again, conflating the two. My point, though, is that some horror films (especially ones that have this kind of weighty emotional import) might do well to have a few well-designed jump-scares. Much like good comedies need some slapstick or body humor to complement intelligent plots or character development, good horror films with particularly memorable plots that disturb long after viewing might do well to offset the heavy stuff with some frisson to make it fun as well as horrifying. Does that make sense? Horror films beg audience reaction, and to only hear a few groans of discomfort is probably not the best sign that your picture is working. You need a few shrieks or even giggles.

And I'm not saying all horror needs that. Look at It Follows, which had very little humor in it; it doesn't need much humor because its premise isn't as deeply disturbing in our culture. Adolescent sexuality is punished, okay, yeah sure. Our culture expects that, because it's been our narrative in real life even more than in film. So that movie can maintain its sense of dread by feeding off plays in narrative devices. But in Sinister, we have children murdering their parents and siblings in religious observance, which is far more taboo for our culture; indeed, very few horror films have ever (to my knowledge) broached this matter. So when almost every other scene of this film forces us to watch these atrocities, it would be nice to have some jump-scare levity in the meantime.

Besides my ambiguous feelings toward the thematic elements of this movie, I should also mention my more pressing concern for it. It's just not as good as the first one. Maybe because it can't spend much time on exposition, it dives pretty quickly into the heavy horror, and it can't really go anywhere from there. Director Foy tries, but he can't escape his own dangerous trap: The gimmicks of his film (the videotapes of the murders) become the stars of his film. Grotesque and disturbing as they are, we yearn for the next one because the rest of the film so lacks what we want to see. Even his camerawork and set design look like rip-offs of other franchises. The first Sinister worked because of its pervasive Gothic energy and sensibility, mixed with a rural awareness of social and religious dynamics. This one feels like a bloodier regurgitation of that atop a mosaic of Children of the Corn. I mean, the climax is a child chasing our protagonists through a cornfield with a scythe, for crying out loud!

Don't get me wrong. I'd much rather watch this than a whole slew of other scary movies. It accomplishes all its sets out to do, with some style and even some heart to boot. It's not bad.

It's just disappointing.

IMDb: Sinister 2