This lackluster followup to one of Blumhouse’s most effective horror films feels like a real ‘90s throwback to the days of DTV sequels. The original film was pretty much terrifying, thanks to the gruesome 8 mm home movies detailing the imaginative deaths of entire families. They unnerved audiences as much as they did Ethan Hawke’s whiskey-swilling true crime novelist, Ellison Oswalt. However, the scariest aspect of this sequel is that it took almost three years to slap together.

Returning from the first film is Oswalt’s pal, played by James Ransone, literally cited as Ex-Deputy So & So in the cast, who lost his job in the wake of the Oswalt family murder. Now a private investigator, Ex-Deputy So & So travels around the country attempting to foil Bughuul’s child-stealing, family-murdering schemes. When PI So & So meets Courtney Collins (Shannyn Sossamon), an on-the-run mother of nine-year-old twins Dylan and Zach (Robert Daniel and Dartanian Sloan), his typical plan of burning down the house is revised to a more traditional stick-around-and-help-the-pretty-lady (despite some very unflattering matronly attire). So & So must now face down Bughuul and an abusive husband (Lea Coco) who has the law in his back pocket.

Ciarán Foy finds little success in his sophomore feature. Maybe he can recover to write and direct another horror flick as his debut, Citadel, showed promise and is why he got hired to direct this unfrightening nonstarter. I also feel sorry for Ransone, whose presence grows more appealing throughout the movie. He practically stole HBO’s “Generation Kill” from everyone and would make a great indie horror protagonist. Maybe the Creep filmmakers can find something for him.

Let us be honest about the horror genre. It is filled with some really awful, bottom-of-the-barrel flicks, a group to which Sinister 2 does not belong. Too bad this flick is not the least bit frightening. The rather boring Insidious: Chapter 3 is Exorcist-level terrifying compared to Sinister 2. Bughuul has a countenance as fear-provoking as a Scooby Doo villain; one would not be surprised were he to rip off his rubber mask at movie’s end to claim how he would have “gotten away with it” had it not been for Ex-Deputy So & So. Though the 8 mm home movies return—and remain this entry’s highlight—they lack anything close to the abject horror projected in its predecessor. The physical presence of the ghost children, so eager to show their evil handiwork to Dylan, who is having none of their homemade Faces of Death, chills no more than Bughuul. The idea that these images are used to condition children provokes an intriguing post-film discussion that no one will actually have.