In Theaters: SINISTER 2 (2015)

SINISTER 2
(US/UK - 2015)

Directed by Ciarin Foy. Written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. Cast: James Ransone, Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Sloan, Dartanian Sloan, Lea Coco, Nick King, Tate Ellington, John Beasley, Lucas Jade Zumann, Jaden Klein, Laila Haley. (R, 97 mins)

Scott Derrickson's SINISTER (2012) was a dark, grim shocker with at least one instant-classic sequence and ranks as one of the better horror films to come off the Blumhouse assembly line.  Derrickson co-wrote the first film with C. Robert Cargill, and both return to script the sequel, though Derrickson has delegated directing duties to Irish filmmaker Ciarin Foy. Foy wrote and directed the intermittently interesting 2012 high-rise horror indie CITADEL, a film with some effectively eerie sequences that just never quite gelled as a whole despite several terrifying moments. The intent of the script and the intent of the director often appear to be working at cross purposes throughout SINISTER 2: Derrickson and Cargill obviously want a modern horror movie filled with piercing jump scares and seem determined to turn boogeyman Bughuul (Nick King) into the next great horror icon, while Foy finds horror in the grounded reality of psychological trauma, much like his widower lead character in CITADEL, a timid man forced to protect himself and his infant child from a marauding gang of feral children prowling the building and seemingly singling him out to terrorize. Foy has said that CITADEL's story was born from a horrific mugging he endured where he violently beaten and stuck with a syringe, and while CITADEL had some undeniably frightening moments, Foy never quite pulled it all together, almost like his script needed one more draft before he got it right. There's a similar feeling throughout SINISTER 2: there's scary elements here, but they're the elements that don't involve the Bughuul silliness and the ghost children.

Taking place a few months after the events of the first film and the tragic fate of the family of celebrity true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), SINISTER's unnamed "Deputy So & So" (James Ransone), the Barney Fife-ish sheriff's deputy and Ellison Oswalt superfan, is promoted to lead character for SINISTER 2. Fired from his job and working as a private eye to make ends meet, So & So is actually on a personal mission to locate and burn down the abandoned homes of families murdered by children in order to prevent future supernatural influence of Bughuul. The exact intent of Bughuul, the corpse-painted boogeyman who looks like the frontman for a Scandinavian black metal band, is a little hazy, but he basically, via ghosts of other dead children, cajoles impressionable kids to carefully plan the elaborately-staged murder of their entire family and film it on Super 8. A lot of this is just an excuse for some inherently creepy, grainy sequences of families being burned alive, electrocuted, or having rats gnaw through them all to the tune of some droning, nerve-jangling music by the duo of tomandandy. So & So ends up at a farmhouse in rural Illinois that he believes to be vacant but is actually occupied by Courtney Collins (Shannyn Sossamon), who is more or less squatting there with her twin sons Dylan (Robert Sloan) and Zach (Dartanian Sloan), the three of them hiding from her estranged, abusive husband Clint (Lea Coco). The house's previous occupants were killed in the barn behind the house and troubled Dylan is already being haunted by visions of Bughuul and dead children convincing him to murder his family.

Where the first film was primarily about Oswalt's investigation into the murders of his house's previous owners, Bughuul was seen only fleetingly, which made his infrequent appearances that much more jarring. Here, Derrickson (also a producer) and Cargill have Foy showing entirely too much of Bughuul, to the point where he ceases to be scary. Indeed, if there's a SINISTER 3, they'll likely have him start talking and dropping the kind of snarky bon mots that turned A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's Freddy Krueger from a frightening and relatively quiet dream demon to a motor-mouthed stand-up comedian by the third and fourth entries in the series. No, the truly scary parts of SINISTER 2 lie beyond Bughuul, and it starts with the effective casting of the young Sloan boys (they're actually part of a set of triplets--they have a sister as well). They aren't completely identical and each is very good in challenging roles. As the introverted Dylan, the chief target of his father's abuse, the thinner, ganglier Robert Sloan perfectly conveys the slump-shouldered sadness of his character, a boy practically afraid of his own shadow and who reflexively wets himself at the sight of his bullying father. The stockier Dartanian plays the more outgoing and less book-smart Zach, the kind of pushy competitor that identifies him as his dad's favorite. The real sense of horror and suffocating tension in SINISTER 2 arrives with the appearance of Coco, who in just three or four short scenes is more terrifying than any of the times we see Bughuul. Sossamon and the Sloans also do their best acting in the scenes later in the film with Coco, whose control-freak Clint won't even allow anyone else at dinner to eat until he's taken his first bite, and is a man crude enough to announce "Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna go fuck my wife" after he beats the shit out of So & So, who shows up unannounced to warn him that they're all in danger. Coco is the secret weapon of SINISTER 2, so much so that you'll actually feel your adrenaline pumping in the extreme discomfort his performance incites. It's he--not the grimacing Bughuul--who's the most frightening thing in the film.

There's a stronger, thematically deeper, and more disturbing film to be made with SINISTER 2 had the focus been entirely on the Collins family and its victimization by Clint--and to an extent Zach, who's clearly on his way to being just like his old man--and how that victimization and the cycle of abuse make it so easy for Bughuul and his supernatural acolytes to sway Dylan. Ransone is likable enough in a second-string Luke Wilson kind-of way as the affable So & So, but did his character even need to return? The filmmakers really drop the ball in the climax in a way that can't properly be described without massive spoilers, but let's just say it takes some leaps and is a tremendous letdown and feels like a scene or two seems to be missing. Foy's voice made itself heard in CITADEL but it was hampered by a script that wasn't quite ready for prime time. Here, that same voice is present but it's muffled by Derrickson's and Cargill's need to turn Bughuul into the face of a franchise. There's some real horror here grounded in everyday, ugly reality, but SINISTER 2 is more concerned with tired jump scares and CGI ghosts.

In Theaters: DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2014)

DELIVER US FROM EVIL
(US - 2014)

Directed by Scott Derrickson. Written by Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman. Cast: Eric Bana, Edgar Ramirez, Olivia Munn, Joel McHale, Sean Harris, Chris Coy, Dorian Missick, Mike Houston, Lulu Wilson, Olivia Horton, Scott Johnsen. (R, 118 mins)

It's been 41 years since THE EXORCIST was released and filmmakers still crank out demonic possession movies as if they have something new to bring to the table. DVD bargain bins are cluttered with the forgettable likes of STIGMATA (1999), LOST SOULS (2000), THE UNBORN (2009), THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT (2009), THE RITE (2011), THE DEVIL INSIDE (2012), and THE POSSESSION (2012). THE LAST EXORCISM (2010) was a well-done found-footage variant, though it spawned an awful sequel. Writer-director Scott Derrickson and co-writer Paul Harris Boardman fashioned one of the more relatively interesting entries in the current possession parade with 2005's THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE which, while not a great movie by any means, was a surprisingly compelling mix of demonic horror and courtroom drama, a sort-of LAW & ORDER: EXORCISM based on the case of Annaliese Michel (also chronicled in the 2006 German film REQUIEM and the 2011 Asylum knockoff ANNALIESE: THE EXORCIST TAPES) that got a lot of mileage from the presence of respectable actors like Tom Wilkinson and Laura Linney, plus Jennifer Carpenter's impressive performance as the possessed Emily Rose. Derrickson later helmed 2012's grim and disturbing SINISTER without Boardman, but the duo are back together for another possession rehash with the "inspired by true events" DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Based on the experiences of Bronx cop-turned-demonologist Ralph Sarchie (played here by Eric Bana), chronicled in his 2001 book Beware the Night, the hopelessly generic DELIVER US FROM EVIL doles out just about every possession cliche you've been seeing since 1973, but seems especially devoted to recycling major plot points of 1990's THE EXORCIST III, minus William Peter Blatty's sharply unique writing and his direction of numerous unsettling sequences throughout. Derrickson's lazy jump scares can be seen coming a mile away (when Sarchie closely examines grainy surveillance footage, you know an evil face is going to flash on the screen and make him bolt back in his seat) and the possession bits get downright laughable as things go on, as the classic rock-savvy demon seems to have an odd affinity for The Doors, haunting Sarchie with greatest hits staples like "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" and "People are Strange," and even hurls some "Is everybody in?  The ceremony is about to begin!" as the exorcism commences.  Call me a possession genre purist, but I'll take "Your mother sucks cocks in Hell!" any day of the week.

Sarchie is a tough-as-nails cop working the night shift with wisecracking, hot-dogging partner Butler (a miscast Joel McHale, looking ridiculous in an Alice in Chains tee and the seven deadly sins tattooed on his neck).  The job is taking its toll on Sarchie, though perhaps it wouldn't if he didn't let his internal "radar" direct him to jump on every dangerous call that comes over the radio. He's got a loving, church-going wife in Jen (Olivia Munn) and an impossibly cute daughter (Lulu Harris), and Jen looks past his being a lapsed Catholic, lamenting that she--wait for it--feels like she doesn't know him anymore and "Even when ya heah, ya not heah." Over the course of a few shifts, Sarchie and Butler encounter a dead baby thrown in the trash, a woman (Olivia Horton) tossing her child in a ravine outside the lion's den at the Bronx Zoo, a dead handyman (Scott Johnsen) in a basement, and Jimmy (Chris Coy), an Iraq War vet who's beating his wife. They're all connected by another Iraq War vet named Santino (Sean Harris), who's caught on camera and seen by witnesses at all of the crime scenes.  Sarchie is hounded by Father Mendoza (Edgar Ramirez), a loose-cannon priest who dabbles in exorcism on the side. The Bronx zoo mom is a member of his parish, and he's convinced she's demonstrating signs of demonic possession. Soon, these evil forces invade Sarchie's life as he begins seeing and hearing things that aren't there on a conscious level, and his daughter falls victim to the out-of-tune strains of a beat-up jack-in-the-box and a stuffed toy owl that hoots on its own. Mendoza informs Sarchie that he has a gift, that his "radar" for cases is actually a sixth sense gift of a connection to the spirit world, and that the spirit may be targeting him for a past sin.

It's hard to imagine what past sins Bana and Ramirez committed to get stranded in a film as bad as this one. They're fine actors but they can't really bring much life to these characters. The spiritual conversations between Sarchie and Mendoza don't exactly have the same sense of insight, banter, and rich characterization that you've seen in similar scenes between Lee J. Cobb's Lt. Kinderman and Jason Miller's Father Karras in THE EXORCIST, or George C. Scott's Kinderman and Ed Flanders' Father Dyer in THE EXORCIST III. Derrickson is pretty shameless in his EXORCIST III worship throughout, from the cop angle to an irresponsible doctor in the psych ward to a possession victim going on a rampage in the hospital, acting under the control of the demonic spirit. Sarchie even races home once he realizes the possessed Santino is at his house, just like Viveca Lindfors' shears-wielding nurse in Blatty's film. Derrickson and Boardman (the duo also wrote Atom Egoyan's empty DEVIL'S KNOT) try to awkwardly shoehorn in some Iraq War commentary but they never really allow it to develop.  Santino, Jimmy, and the handyman were all vets who encountered a Latin verse carved into the wall of a cave as some evil latched on to them. Are the filmmakers trying to make some kind of heavy-handed analogy between PTSD and possession?  Who knows?  They can't even follow through on all of the plot threads, the constant Doors references are just silly, the SNL "Da War of Da Woilds" accents overbaked, the SE7EN-inspired set design too darkly-photographed, and the only thing that really keeps your attention is the recurring continuity flub with the bandaging on Sarchie's right arm that appears and disappears throughout. Drab and dull, overlong and underthought, the tired and vacant DELIVER US FROM EVIL wheezes its way to its weak conclusion, seemingly working from a checklist rather than an actual script.

In Theaters: SINISTER (2012)

SINISTER
(US/UK - 2012)

Directed by Scott Derrickson.  Written by Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill.   Cast: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Vincent D'Onofrio, Fred Dalton Thompson, James Ransone, Clare Foley, Michael Hall D'Addario.  (R, 109 mins)

Horror fans can often the most demanding, nit-picky, and impossible-to-please movie audience out there.  I include myself in that to a certain extent and of course there's things one could grumble about in SINISTER but they're relatively minor and for a film dealing with the supernatural and a demonic serial killer with the possible ability to traverse realms of existence, you can't complain about something not being "realistic," or, as one IMDb commenter states, "The wife sure is a heavy sleeper!"  Just shut up.  SINISTER is one of the best horror films to come down the pike in some time, and if you're tired of CGI silliness or torture-porn excess or creatively-bankrupt remakes, then you'll forgive the minor lapses in logic and the lack of documentary realism.  For the most part, SINISTER is smart, character-driven, deeply unsettling and genuinely terrifying. 

True-crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) hasn't had a hit book in ten years.  In a slump and running out of money but with no desire to go back to teaching or editing textbooks, he moves his family--wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance), 12-year-old son Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario), and young daughter Ashley (Clare Foley)--into a new house in a small town so he can research the ritualistic killing of a local family the previous year, with the disappearance of the family's youngest daughter still unsolved. What Ellison doesn't tell Tracy, and what the grumpy sheriff (Fred Dalton Thompson) tells him is "in poor taste," is that they've moved into the murdered family's house.  Ellison finds a box of Super 8 films with a projector in the attic, the film cans labeled "Hanging Around," and "BBQ" among other innocuous titles.  To his horror, Ellison watches the films and discovers that they seem to be homemade snuff films of a series of ritualistic killings of families dating back to 1966.  Transferring the films to his laptop and inspecting the footage in more detail by adjusting the contrast or zooming in, Ellison discovers repeat appearances of a demonic, white-faced figure lurking in the background or reflected in mirrors.  A series of children's drawings on the inside of the box lid identifies both the names of the murder victims and this figure, known as "Mr. Boogie."  Ellison starts hearing footsteps in the attic (inexplicably finding a snake and a scorpion at different times), the film projector starts turning itself on in the middle of the night, Trevor has incidents of night terrors, artistic Ashley starts drawing images from the films that she couldn't possibly have seen, and at one point, Ellison accidentally snaps a cell phone pic of himself while falling through the attic floor and when he looks at it, sees tiny hands attempting to drag him down.  Then he looks out of his office window and spots Mr. Boogie watching him from some bushes in the distance.

With some help from the sheriff's starstruck deputy (James Ransone), Ellison is referred to Prof. Jonas (Hawke's close pal Vincent D'Onofrio, who Skypes in his entire role), an expert in occult crimes who recognizes a symbol found in the footage as that of an ancient Pagan deity named Bhaguul, who was able to move from various dimensions through visual means such as drawings--or, in more modern times, photos or film.  Ellison starts to find concrete connections not just with Mr. Boogie's involvement in the ritual slayings, but also between the victims over the half-century of collected footage.

Directed and co-written by Scott Derrickson (THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE and the 2008 remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL), SINISTER is a rare kind of fright film for these days:  there's very little gore (some snippets on the footage, and a couple of throat slicings reflected in Ellison's glasses as he watches), and an unusually diligent focus on mood and character.  We get to know Ellison and the family before the terrible things start happening, and Derrickson makes a brave decision in making him somewhat unsympathetic.  It's hard to get behind a protagonist who keeps important information from his family and stubbornly insists on staying because of his ambition and need to resuscitate his fame.  The story progresses organically, so it doesn't even feel like a cliche when Ellison starts hitting the bottle and neglecting his family.  SINISTER creates a mood of suffocating dread the likes of which aren't typically seen in mainstream, wide-release genre fare.  And yeah some of it may come off as illogical--for some of the atmosphere to be effective, it's necessary for Ellison to wander around in the dark using his light from his cell phone to guide him when he could just simply flip a damn light switch--but from start to finish, SINISTER works.  We see just enough of Mr. Boogie to make him scary, where many films would have him front and center and probably be a wisecracking smartass on top of that. 

Sure, Derrickson does go for a few cheap jolts, but he knows there's tension and terror in the waiting, and on several occasions, he and veteran composer Christopher Young (the score here is fantastic) work together to hypnotically lull the audience before dropping a pants-shitting scare.  There's something inherently ominous about any use of grainy film stock in horror movies (think the "shared dream" bits of John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS), and it's a hard scare tactic to screw up, but Derrickson not only makes it work, but he makes it scarier than usual (the instant-classic lawnmower scene had the audience buzzing with assorted "Jesus Christ!"s ,"Holy shit!"s and "Daaaaaamn!"s, followed by several minutes of nervous chuckling and breath-catching).  SINISTER has a lot of things in common with James Wan's INSIDIOUS from last year, but where that film started cutting corners (Really? This mystery woman is openly lurking in the background of every photo ever taken of you in your life and you never noticed it until now?) and falling down on the job with a ludicrous third act, SINISTER finds the right tone and maintains it all the way through to its grim and uncompromising day-ruiner of a finale.  This film earns its cred the old-fashioned way, relying more on the horror of the unseen and the imagined rather than explicitly depicting it in graphic fashion.  And even better--it's a self-contained story.  Sure, there could be a sequel (I hope there's not), but it doesn't wrap up on the kind of cliffhanging, open ending that almost every modern horror films seem to do.  Well-acted, smartly-written, bleak and disturbing as hell, SINISTER is the real deal.