The demon Bughuul is back and is looking to recruit more children to assist in adding to his library of Super 8 snuff tapes but this time it’s without any of the surprise that the originality of the first installment gave us and where the original had the over the top performances of both Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio this offers nothing in the acting stakes.

We are supposed to believe that a mother would knowingly move her kids into a house with the history it has without any other obvious reason than the fact that she is trying to hide from her abusive ex-husband. At least in the first movie Hawke wanted to do research into the murders so it gave some purpose behind his logic.

The ex-deputy from the first movie, who seems to be the only person that actually knows what is going on, decides that the information that he has is best kept to himself and never advises the family of the danger they are in. Instead he hangs around like some form of macabre rubbernecker waiting on the bloodshed to begin and acts like the David Arquette Officer Dewey character from the Scream series of movies.

Where the idea for introducing the Ham radio came from is a mystery as it takes the premise of how the movie operates and pushes it in a whole different direction. Remember, this demon can already control laptops and TV sets so presumably this change is only done to try and keep the medium of the equipment that Bughuul uses retro for the inevitable third installment.

The fact that director Ciarán Foy tries to use the demon as representation of the abuse the children suffered through their father is touching upon an interesting concept but this gets lost in the attempts at pointless jump scares and the only sequence which has any real sense of dread is the final fifteen minutes which is mainly shot from behind the lens of the old school camera and the cuts from in front of the camera to the silent views from behind the camera, is the only ‘sinister’ thing through the whole movie so, if you haven’t seen the first film watch that instead as at least there are some memorable moments and also because this sequel presumes you have the knowledge of the events of part one. Then once you have done that don’t bother watching this one.

DJ Speaks Rating: 4 out of 10