This summer has been a very disappointing season for horror buffs. Deliver Us From Evil was a cheaply written disappointment, The Purge: Anarchy transitioned the franchise from chills to thrills and Jessabelle has been bumped to November. In fact, unless August’s As Above, So Below turns out to be a scary good time (and based on that trailer, I can safely say it won’t), I’ll have to conclude that the only true horror movie to hit theaters this summer was Blended. Luckily, next summer seems a little more promising (not hard, I know). Insidious: Chapter 3 is landing in May, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children should be creepy fun in July, and now we’ve learned that Sinister 2 will be coming in August.
The sequel will go up against Warner Bros.’ romance Me Before You on August 21st next year. Ciaran Foy (Citadel) will be sitting behind the camera for the next chapter, which the first film’s director Scott Derrickson penned the script for with his Sinister collaborator C. Robert Cargill. Sinister 2 is set to roll cameras in Chicago next month.
So far, we don’t know very much about the sequel at all. It has been confirmed though that James Ransone will be returning in some capacity to reprise the role of the deputy who attempted to assist Ethan Hawke’s ill-fated protagonist, Ellison Oswalt, throughout the first Sinister. On the matter of writing the script, Derrickson recently told JoBlo:
“It was a laborious process. We took a long time to write it. We threw out a lot of pages, because we didn’t want to settle for a predictable script. We wanted it to feel like a ‘Sinister’ sequel, the kind of sequel we would want to see because we’re such fans of the genre. We both know horror franchises so well, and we’re both pretty sensitive to how they can go awry, what you don’t want to see. I think we found just the right angle for it; it’s fresh and unpredictable yet provides the kind of stuff you want to see from a ‘Sinister’ sequel.”
Hopefully Derrickson follows through. The first Sinister was deliciously scary, and there’s no reason that Sinister 2 should be any different.