This seemed like a great departure from the original movie, as it tried too hard to focus on the children and the monster involved. I felt like this one relied too much on humor and gore or shock value to be a good movie. Just to say it was not a very good movie at all.
Premise - a mother and her two sons have moved into a house to get away from her abusive ex-husband. One of the sons has been seeing ghost children who want him to watch the videos they made of their families. The young boy, Dylan, does not want to watch them but they keep telling him that he must so that his nightmares will go away. He is dubious of this, but his brother is not. His brother wants to be a part of it all and is upset that Dylan is getting all of the attention. The brother, Zach, is just as abusive as the father, and the mother seems unable to discipline her son. At one point Zach beats Dylan quite severely and the mother, Courtney, just sends him to his room. The father eventually gets an order to get the boys and bring them home, and the Courtney goes along so she can protect Dylan. And if you have seen the first movie you know what happens when they leave one home and move to another. The Deputy from the first movie has been around all along, showing up at the house to take care of some things, which he is unable to do because of the family living there.
This movie didn't have the kick of the first. Why was the first SINISTER movie so special? Because it introduced the twist near the end of the film and because it was new. Trying to do a sequel would have been tough, but this one tries to go one step too far by involving the motivation of the children and this movie spent too much time on the backstory of the family. I would have liked this movie to go back to the original, but instead it tried too hard to be a movie about why these kids followed the monster.
Honestly, if this movie was about the kids, without the ghost kids, it would have been better. It would have been a better story if it didn't try to explain so much. It went too far and it was not very interesting. Plus, while I don't mind humor in a horror film, I felt like this one tried way too hard to be more than what it was.
I don't recommend it at all. Honestly, like ROGUE ONE I wasn't sure why anyone wanted to make this movie. I didn't hold true to the original and the scares were no where to be found. Plus it was entirely too predictable. Not good, not good at all.