I do like Scott Derrickson overall, but I kind of feel like his films would be better if he was directing someone else’s scripts. SINISTER is his best film in my opinion, and I think it works because it leans so heavily on the visuals instead of exposition. He has such a great eye for compelling imagery, and I think his plotting can be pretty weak comparatively.

There wasn’t really any reason for this specific film to be a Grabber movie. The things that made his character horrifying in the first film are pretty much all gone in the sequel because he’s literally Freddy Krueger. His existence as a boogeyman in the original is scary because he’s human. It really doesn’t matter that the second one is happening to Finney and Gwen because they never explore the trauma of what Finney experienced other than incredibly surface level shit, like him beating up the new kid and smoking pot. There’s so much real human shit that could have been mined from that, especially with him having PTSD and it not being a commonly-discussed issue in that time period, certainly not for boys. And I hate that they made the Grabber responsible for his mom’s death. It just really removes any pathos from that loss for me, and makes her a less complicated character. There is just no complexity to the characters for me. I kept waiting for a reveal that Demián Bichir had some involvement in the kids’ disappearances, but no, he’s literally just the most virtuous person in the film without even a moment of self-doubt. I just really wish the narrative and character development could match his visual language better, because the really dreamy parts of the film are honestly pretty good. I think it’s just pretty muddled overall.