Have a very scary Christmas with this Sinister 2 clip

“Sinister 2” has none of those things, and also completely misses the escalating sense of dread and mystery that powered its predecessor: Offering little catch-up for newcomers, the film presumes familiarity with the twists and turns of the first film, without supplementing them with much that’s fresh.

Following up on Oswalt’s research, So & So has identified a decrepit Illinois farm, the scene of another grisly killing, as part of a self-reinforcing network of murder sites that continues generating mayhem, all under the influence of Bughuul. Attempting to evade her abusive husband Clint (Lea Coco), Courtney may have inadvertently risked exposing her kids to Bughuul instead, a miscalculation that only So & So has the expertise to investigate. Using the boarded-up church as a workshop for her custom-furniture business, she hasn’t even bothered to Google the details of the Unspeakable Ritualistic Torture Murders that took place on that very spot.

To convince Dylan to carry out his devilish mission, Milo and friends show him their own murder movies, which So & So learns during his investigation are required by Bughuul as “aesthetic observances of violence”. Sensitive Dylan (Robert Sloan) catches the creepy vibes. Their grainy home movies show families decapitated by alligators, buried alive, electrocuted and bored to death by rats (as in, the rats bore through them). Their flight takes them to a remote Indiana house next to a church where one of Bughuul’s charges – a well-dressed boy named Milo (Lucas Jade Zumann) – killed his pious Mom, Dad, and sibling by having rats gnaw through their stomachs, and now has set about making return visits from the afterlife to convince Dylan to do likewise against his monstrous dad, jerk brother, and passive mother.

James Ransone, as the hero, is a likable Bruce Campbell type reprising his role as a now-former deputy. And Baghuul, that scamp, looks ready for the inevitable “Sinister 3″.