Sinister is one of the better big-budget horror movies in recent memory, and nobody was surprised
when this Blumhouse film got the sequel treatment in 2015.
But since then, there hasn't been so much as a whisper about a third chapter.
Instead, it looks like the whole Sinister series has been abandoned in favor of other
franchises.
Why does sequel-happy Hollywood want nothing more to do with Bughuul and his box of haunted
videos?
Let's roll the tape.
Sinister 2 didn't make enough cash
Producer Jason Blum knows a thing or two about getting a series off the ground.
He's the man who made one-off movies like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Purge
into successful, multi-film franchises.
But when asked about the prospect of a third Sinister movie during a Facebook Live chat
in 2016, Blum was brutally honest, saying, "We didn't do well enough with Sinister 2.
Not enough people went to see Sinister 2 to make Sinister 3, which is really sad."
If you're wondering what "sad" looks like in terms of cold, hard numbers: the original
Sinister made $77 million on a $3 million budget; the sequel, which cost more than three
times as much to make, brought in only $52 million.
Critics tore the second film apart
So why did audiences not latch onto Sinister 2 the way that they did for the original?
Not to be blunt, but probably because it was a bad movie — at least according to critics.
Wesley Morris of Grantland summed it up best, writing, "There comes a point when you have
to say no to these horror sequels.
There's no skill or idea visible anywhere, just the sound of money being sucked from
your pockets."
And he wasn't alone; even critics who liked the first Sinister movie thought this one
was cheap, unbelievable, and most of all, unnecessary.
The sequel botched the best part
Like the first movie, Sinister 2 centers around a series of snuff films, each involving the
grisly murder of what appears to be an entire family.
And in the first film, these sequences were so disturbing that it kinda felt like we shouldn't
even be seeing them — which made it a highly effective horror movie, if not the source
of a few recurring nightmares.
But in Sinister 2, the murder films looked more like crudely shot B-movies, screened
with a bargain-bin horror soundtrack that took them over the line from creepy to cheesy.
With the scariest part of Sinister effectively ruined by the sequel, it's no surprise that
Hollywood preferred not to unbox any future home videos from Bughuul.
They killed the premise — and the whole cast
After the original Sinister ended with a huge reveal — that the movie's snuff films were
made by kids, who killed their own families while under the influence of an ancient Boogeyman
— Sinister 2 tried to do something different.
With the source of the movies no longer a mystery, the sequel took a new angle, focusing
on one kid as he's courted by the ghostly squad of child murderers who want him to join
their ranks… and taking all the mystery out of the premise that made Sinister scary
in the first place.
Oops.
On top of that, both of these movies end with the deaths of virtually every major character
— which is appropriately dark for a horror film, but not so good for a horror franchise.
With nobody left alive to star in a new installment, Sinister 3 would have to start from scratch,
creating a whole new set of characters to breathe life into a tired storyline.
The monster is a bore
This is a problem that started with Sinister and never got fixed: Bughuul is more than
just an unpronounceable name —he's a lousy character, too.
"Some cultures believe that it lived in another realm, reachable only by ritual or sacrifice."
Whatever that means.
Both movies identify Bughuul, also known as the Boogeyman, as an otherworldly being who
exists to corrupt innocent children.
But as the antagonist of a major horror franchise, we never really get to know Bughuul: his hopes,
his dreams, his reasons for dressing up like a low-rent Michael Jackson impersonator.
Sure, he makes for a good jump scare — but without a compelling villain to shape the
franchise around, making more Sinister movies would be a chore, especially when competing
series like The Conjuring are trotting out fresh, interesting monsters with legitimate
backstories on the regular.
The original director has moved on
Sinister director Scott Derrickson doesn't do generic horror, and he's especially good
at translating classic subject matter into something freshly terrifying.
[Unintelligible] "You speak Latin, huh?"
That would make him the perfect person to get this spooky series back on track — if
only he had the time for it.
But Derrickson let someone else take the reins when it came to directing Sinister 2.
And by the time the sequel hit theaters, he was already on to bigger things: specifically
the Marvel movie Doctor Strange, which catapulted him into a whole new world of big-budget,
high-profile projects.
Between adapting Bong-Joon Ho's Snowpiercer into a TV series and probably helming the
inevitable Doctor Strange sequel, Derrickson has plenty on his plate — and he isn't likely
to waste his energy trying to bring small-budget Bughuul and his squad of killer kiddos back
from the dead… or wherever they are.
So when it comes to more Sinister sequels, it looks like the hero from Sinister 2 gets
the last word.
"It's over, Zach.
You're not making another film."
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