Following the monumental success of production company Blumhouse’s Paranormal Activity, a slew of found-footage and surprisingly blood-less supernatural horrors starting cropping up here, there and everywhere. A lot of them have been awful (The Devil Inside, Ouija, The Pyramid) but every once in a while we get some good ones (Insidious, The Conjuring, Oculus). Sinister was an example of the latter, a creepily effective, atmospheric and inventive entry into the new school of mainstream horror that held plenty of potential for sequels to come.

Well, now we have the first sequel in what will presumably be a long-running horror franchise. I’m sad to say that it’s a disappointing continuation, avoiding the exact bottom of the barrel but doing nothing inspiring or, most importantly, scary with the concept.

This one takes place a little while after the events of the first film that [SPOILER ALAERT] left Ethan Hawke’s crime writer character and his family dead at the hands of their young daughter who was “claimed” by the demon Bughuul. We now follow a different family; a mother and her two sons, who move into a farmhouse and begin being targeted by the demon. Luckily “Deputy So & So” from the first film (James Ransone) is back. He realises the family are in danger and investigates the mystery to help try and save them before it’s too late.

There are several main issues with this particular horror continuation. First of all, it’s just not scary enough. Scott Derickson is now over at Marvel directing Doctor Strange and so sophomore director Ciaran Foy has stepped up to the plate. His previous film was the low-budget Irish horror Citadel, which utilized a small scale and little money to nice effect. But, despite similarly limited locations, this is a much bigger playing field and both the visual aesthetic and types of scares merely come off as copycatting the first one rather than putting any sort of unique directorial stamp on it.

It relies far too heavily on the murder reels themselves; the first one had only a handful and skilfully used them at just the right moments, building tension so that you dreaded every time Hawke sat down to view the next one. Here it just uses them as a sort of horror safety net with neither the atmosphere nor inventiveness within the reels themselves to back that up. It also takes a bizarre and unexpected swerve in the last third that takes a leaf out of Children of the Corn’s book that just feels confusing and like it comes from a different film.

Then there’s the lead actor. Hawke helped elevate what could have been a clichéd obsessed writer figure into something substantial and empathetic. But as much as Ransone is a likeable presence (TV fans may recognise him from season 2 of The Wire), he isn’t the type of actor who can carry a whole film like this. What was before some welcome comedic relief now takes centre stage – clunky exposition included – and it’s rather unconvincing and ineffective when he’s supposed to be our anchor throughout the spook goings-on.

Lastly, and this may be the film’s worst sin, is that it moves forward with a pretty cool horror mythology but often negates what we know already, jumping neatly into the same category as the awful The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death in that respect. Now of course a sequel, particularly in this most crowded of genres, should be able to try something different and/or expand on the established mythos. But there’s a difference between revealing more and just breaking rules; for example, our camera viewpoint for some of the murderous events just shouldn’t be possible within this particular world as it was first presented. It’s at the very least unfair to the audience who have come back for more, and at worst detrimental and confusing to a narrative that’s already hindered by clichés and thin character development.

Sinister 2 is far from the worst example of this kind of modern, supernatural “bumps in the night” horror; it’s not The Gallows, that’s for sure. It has decent performances for the material – particularly Shannyn Sossamon as a mother often too distracted trying to keep custody of her two sons to really notice the supernatural events plaguing their lives – and the general concept of the villainous boogeyman Bughuul remains unnerving and fascinating in equal measure. But it’s ultimately bland and forgettable and that just should not have been the case given the concept it had. As it stands it’s nothing that a decent straight-to-DVD horror couldn’t best.