They say everyone has a Boogeyman. In England, The Boogeyman is often described as a shadowy ghost-like man, hiding out in dark places and coming to get children who misbehave. But many other cultures have their own variations.
In Spain, there’s el hombre del saco, or The Sack Man, an old man who is said to kidnap trouble-making kids in a large bag for the purpose of later eating them. In Portugal, Spain and parts of Latin America, they have El Coco, a mythological devourer of disobedient kids, sometimes said to whisk them into the spirit world, with no hope of ever returning. Most sources agree that the first textual references to The Boogeyman cropped up in the 1500s in England, where he was referred as a sort of hobgoblin, with the name derived from the Middle English word bogge (bogey), use to refer to a frightening specter or scarecrow.
Notably, the Welsh version of the word, bwgwl, which is literally spelled like this, most closely identifies with one of the more terrifying depictions of the character. But most would agree that the idea of the Boogeyman goes back much further, and because of the changing legends and different interpretations across cultures, it would be impossible to pinpoint any one origin. It’s likely that the idea of a supernatural entity who punishes bad kids has more or less *always* existed in our world.
But in the lore of the Sinister franchise, it goes back as far as Babylonian times, possibly originating around 2000 BCE. – [Jonas] It’s a symbol, associated with the worship of a Pagan deity. A very obscure one dating back to Babylonian times named Bughuul, the eater of children.
Like The Boogeyman of our world, there are said to be fragments of Bughuul or The Bogeyman across many cultures and time periods, with the common element connecting them being his need to trick human children in order to trap them in his netherworld and feast on their souls to survive. – [Stromberg] …some cultures believed that it lived in another realm, reachable only by ritual or sacrifice. Most believe that these are just stories, but a select few have realized it’s actually something far more *Sinister*.
To learn about how Bughuul is connected to a black metal musician, how he became the ultimate depiction of one of mythology’s oldest ideas, and where the Sinister franchise could be headed next, stick around to the end of this video. This video is sponsored by Factor. ♪ Metal Music ♪ Welcome to Horror History.
Some franchises are forgotten about by Blumhouse, but they still need to have their stories told -- they deserve that much! Sinister was the 2012 crime-slash-supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson, who also has a goatee. (cheering sfx).
. . and which currently has one sequel, a 2015 follow-up directed by Ciaran Foy.
There have been many attempts to portray the idea of a Bogeyman, and because there’s no official text or canon material, these interpretations are often quite different from one another. You’ve got everything from Nightmare Before Christmas’s burlap starfish of creepy crawlies, putting a literal spin on the “Boogie” title with his affinity for dance-y piano driven jazz music; to Stephen King’s take, a slender quadruped type whose face contains a somehow even more terrifying face. At least in the movie.
But the term doesn’t necessarily have to refer to a specific entity named The Boogeyman. Many people see it as more of a general term to describe anyone they see as scary or detestable. Like you could say La Llorona is a Mexican boogeyman; or in a debate you might hear “my opponent is making me out to be a boogeyman.
” Movies like the original Halloween explore this idea, with 8-year Tommy Doyle hearing about The Boogeyman at school, and coming to believe the stories are true when he sees Michael Myers carrying a body out of the house across from him. Like the urban legend, the fear grows as more people start to believe. – [Laurie] I killed him.
– [Tommy] You can't kill The Boogeyman. (screams) And this would prove to be true. Not just in the movie, but in our own world, where the idea of a Boogeyman has persisted nearly 50 years later.
– [Dr Gordon] See, there's no one in your room. There's no such thing as the bad man. – Sounds like a real bogeyman.
– Yes. Mother will protect you from the bogeyman. But perhaps it was this wild array of Boogeyman stories on film that inspired Sinister’s Boogeyman, sometimes referred to as “Mr Boogie”, to use the medium of film to lure in his victims.
In fact, co-writer C Robert Cargill has gone on record to say that the idea behind the box of old snuff films showing the victims of Bughuul came to him in a nightmare he had after seeing the movie The Ring. This became a central component of their version of The Boogeyman. – The murders are captured through art?
Each case shares 3 things: a murdered family, a missing child, and some form of iconological totem or a thematic offering. While this could be a film, it could also be a drawing, audio recording, or something else. There are a few ancient drawings that depict Bughuul’s executions, but only one of them is dated, this woodcut print from 1693, titled “Family Drwning” from Beverly, Massachusetts.
I should note that some believe Bughuul to be related to a very specific deity from the Canaanite culture dating back to prehistoric times, and it’s all because of this image posted to the official Sinister Social Media accounts, which claims that Bughuul is the brother of Moloch, the ancient Canaanite god of child sacrifice. It says: “Bughuul. Brother to Moloch, bloodthirsty and savage.
Abducts young souls to his underworld to feed from them over time. Then it happened that Bughuul’s eyes strayed to that which belonged to Moloch, and he so desired to consume the children that he took them in the dark of night. Moloch saw the betrayal of Bughuul, and shut his mouth with ash, that he might never again taste flash.
Thus did brother condemn brother for eternity. ” There’s also this second image, showing Bughuul’s symbol surrounded by symbols for Moloch and three other ancient deities from various cultures. None of this info is referenced in either Sinister movie, but these images are posted to official verified social media pages, and they don’t really contradict the info in the movies.
It’s your call really if you want to consider this information to be canon. I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life. I would say it could be canon, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if a future Sinister movie went in a different direction.
But to get a better understanding of Bughuul, I’m gonna take it back to his earliest known victims on the timeline. (IMPACT) If you see a mysterious box full of horrifying films appear in your attic, take caution, you may be the next victim of Bughuul. But if you see a box full of delicious, ready to eat meals, don’t panic, you may have received an order from Factor.
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♪ Dradful Music ♪ The way Bughuul operates is, like many modern horror entities, under a strict set of patterns. He attacks a family, abducts one of the kids into his netherworld, waits for someone to move into the vacant house, then starts to terrorize them, until they move out, at which point he kills the family at their new place of residence. This kind of protects him from being discovered by the general public, because from an outside perspective, it looks like a bunch of random murders taking place all over the map.
You kind of have to dig in order to connect them, which would eventually happen, but not quite yet. The question is: is there just one long chain of victims stretching back for the past 4000 years? Or are there multiple chains happening at once?
Well, the movies themselves don’t contain any hard evidence of a second string of victims, however, in the deleted scenes of the second one, there is a sticky note that says “New Chain” which suggests that this was originally the idea. They also don’t address the possibility of a chain being split. What if a family moves out of one murder house, and this starts a chain of several massacres, then once some time has passed, a third family buys some cheap real estate, and they start their own line of tragedies?
This is what I personally think is the most likely scenario, meaning that Bughuul could almost never run out of potential victims, and I’ll get to why later on. While most of Bughuul’s activity since the invention of the consumer grade video camera has been well documented, there are a few reels that don’t have a specific date attached to them, so let’s talk about those real quick. Bughuul doesn’t actually take out any victims himself, but rather, he manipulates a child, most likely a child that was misbehaving, to carry out his plans for him.
The only physical intervention that Bughuul theoretically takes is supplying the kids with this mysterious sedative. Each time, the child films the entire process on a Super 8 film camera: which includes the family partaking in some kind of activity, the kid drugging the rest of the family by putting this sedative in their drinks or food, and an abrupt cut forward to a horrifying death scene. There are four such reels that we don’t know the date of.
“Fishing Trip” was created by a boy named Ted, who catches some fish with his parents and 2 brothers, and grills them up at the house. We see the mom has a flask drugged with the supernatural sedative. I’m assuming it’s a supernatural substance because of this line.
– Toxicology reports. In some cases the killer drugged his victims. – With what?
Well, they couldn't tell for sure. Long story short, the rest of the family has their faces bagged and suspended over the river, where they’re left as bait for the alligators. I have no idea how little Ted hoisted all of them up there though.
In all of the other videos, there’s always some kind of method to explain how a little kid was able to pull it off, like harnessing gravity or using a machine, but this one contains no explanation. The other videos follow a similar formula. “Christmas Morning” sees a girl named Emma spike the hot cocoa and bury her family alive in the freezing snow, “Kitchen Remodel” has a boy named Peter tamper with the refreshments and electrocute his family with a live wire, and the last one doesn’t have a title, so I’ll just call it “The Dentist One” because it shows 3 victims whose mouths are forced open with metal brackets as a girl named Catherine drills through their open mouths into their heads.
The reason I’m bringing these up now, is while we don’t officially know the dates for any of them, they do look older… and also there’s a deleted scene where it’s kind of blurry but it looks like the police report for “Fishing Trip” says 1953 and “The Dentist One” looks like it says 1965. This doesn’t entirely make sense though, because the Super 8 camera wasn’t even released until 1965. I don’t consider deleted scenes to be canon anyway, they are deleted for a reason, but there are clues in the actual movie too, suggesting this footage is older.
“Christmas Morning” in particular features a very 1960s looking TV, and really, who gets a cowboy suit and a spinny wand for Christmas anymore? This has gotta be set in the 60s or 70s. The oldest Bughuul incident we do have a date for is the 1966 Oregon drownings.
– The pattern goes back to the 1966 Oregon drownings. This reel, entitled “Pool Party”, shows a family of five being recorded in secret from the bushes by the youngest son. The sedative is administered right here when they all sit down to eat -- the son has mixed the supernatural formula into the lemonade pitcher -- setting the stage for that evening, when the family members find themselves tied to pool chairs.
One by one, they’re yanked into water and drowned. This is also the first known recording of Bughuul on video, he can be seen standing under the water, and ominously looks directly into the camera. Eventually, the surviving son comes on screen and shushes the camera before disappearing into the pool, presumably crossing over into the Netherworld and becoming one of Bughuul’s children.
The Oregon family’s house would sit vacant for a while after the tragedy, but there would be other activity for Bughuul in the meantime, which leads me to the 1973 Norwegian Radio incident. It starts with a kid on a ham radio reciting the coordinates of his farmhouse. I see this as a covert call for help, he likely knew what was about to happen.
There’s a muffled voice in the background, as another kid, most likely his sister, the one being manipulated by Bughuul yells out in Norwegian, saying “Quiet, Bughuul can’t hear me over your yelling, Mom. ” That’s when things get dark. (SCREAMS) It’s said that the entire family was murdered, but most likely, the boy was transported to Bughuul’s world.
So this incident tells us two things: one -- the recordings can be made using other technology besides a camera; and two -- this was an important part of the ritual, because we can tell by the girl’s dialogue that she’s *afraid* of what Bughuul will do to her if he can’t hear her in the recording. And just as the Super 8 films have a way of appearing in an empty attic and terrifying family after family, this radio broadcast would mysteriously go out every now and then in the 1970s, becoming part of a local urban legend, another variant of The Boogeyman. There were also at least 3 other similar broadcasts in Norway around that time, which suggests that this was part of yet another chain.
The choice to set this one in Norway, by the way, may be a little nod by the filmmakers to the real world story of how the Bughuul character was conceived. Derrickson and Cargill were surfing online horror art for inspiration, and ended up finding an image they liked so much, they just purchased the rights from the artist, likening it to a musician from a black metal band. Black metal, for those not familiar, is a subgenre of heavy metal known for high shrieking vocals set over high tempo instrumentals.
It originated in Norway, and often incorporates extreme costumes with a lot of skulls, spikes and black and white corpse makeup. After learning that, I have to agree that Bughuul would not feel out of place strumming some bassline in Gorgoroth. But I guess Derrickson and Cargill really like this connection, because the soundtrack during the “barbeque” scene in the first Sinister comes from the Norwegian band Ulver.
It’s one of their newer electronica songs, but the band does have roots in the black metal scene. And of course, there’s this line about the symbol seen at the crime scenes in the first movie. – [Jonas] The symbol that you sent me, isn't a pentagram.
It's not something that you would see teenagers or a Norwegian black metal band paint on the wall in goat's blood. So Norwegian black metal is very much a part of this horror icon’s DNA. Be sure to catch him at next year’s Wacken Open Air.
But six years later, in a completely different corner of the world in Sacramento, California, we would have our next confirmed recording of Bughuul. (IMPACT) ♪ Mysterious Music ♪ In 1979, The Martinez family inadvertently put themselves in Bughuul’s line of fire when they moved out of the house that the Oregon drownings took place in, and into their new house in Sacramento. It was here that Bughuul took hold of one of their two boys, possessing him to make a home movie titled: “B.
B. Q. ”.
We see the Dad and sons going fishing and having a cookout near the lake, only *this* was *not* the barbeque referenced in the title. We cut to the inside of a garage where the parents and one of their sons are bound and gagged inside the car, which is bound shut with chains. A can of gasoline is found inside, and the car is torched and goes up in flames.
Like the end of “Pool Party”, Bughuul can be seen lurking nearby, and also like “Pool Party”, this one ends with a little boy walking into frame and shushing the camera. The chain continues with the De Luzio family, who eventually moved to the Sacramento house, probably got spooked, and relocated to Orange County. But Bughuul stayed with them, and manipulated the daughter to run over her parents and brother with a lawnmower.
As always, she filmed her kills and this home movie became known as “Lawn Work”. We don’t see the entire thing, but based on Ellison’s reaction, this could be the most disturbing one. In the end, the daughter parks the lawnmower and addresses the camera with a shush.
It would take another 12 years for a new family to fall into Bughuul’s trap, but in February 1998, the Miller family would move from the “Lawn Work” house in Orange County to their new residence in St. Louis, Missouri. Here, the oldest of their two sons, Christopher Miller, recorded himself slitting his parents’ throats in the night in a reel titled: “Sleepy Time”.
Perhaps because of the time period, this incident ended up getting a bunch of press coverage. Police conducted a full scale search for the missing Chirstopher, and one blog called Serial Killer Watcher pointed out how the case was never actually linked to a serial killer but has many distinct characteristics of one. But even this heavily publicized tragedy would eventually fade from relevance, given enough time, and at some point, the Stevenson family moved into the house.
But their stay there was only temporarily, and eventually they’d end up in *this house* in Chatford, Pennsylvania, where they would become the subjects of the next video tribute to Bughuul which was titled: “Family Hanging Out. ” According to missing posters, this all took place on August 29th, 2011. In the video, we see a family of five playing and picnicking in their backyard.
The scene then cuts forward to show the parents and two of the children standing in nooses tied to a tree. Ten year old Stephanie climbs up and cuts down a branch with a motorized saw, causing the rope to go taut and causing her family members to hang by the neck. Bughuul can be seen watching all of this from the trees, and Stephanie climbs down to shush at the camera, just like the children before her.
This time, it didn’t take long for a new family to move in, because the recent tragedy kept the price low. – This place came on the market. It was a steal.
So true crime author Ellison Oswalt moves his family in, with hopes of solving the case of the missing Stephanie, while simultaneously reviving his career. The move-in happened on October 2nd, 2011, one day before an anchor date on October 3rd. Bughuul’s presence is immediately noticeable (if you’re paying close attention).
While storing boxes into the attic, Ellison encounters a scorpion. Much later on, he would consult with a University professor who shows him some of the oldest surviving images associated with ancient writings about Bughuul. Each of them depicts a much more ancient version of one of the execution methods seen on the film reels: a drowning, a burning and a hanging.
And each prominently depicts the evil entity as a different animal: a scorpion, a snake and a dog. Ellison would eventually encounter all of these, we’ll come back to the snake and the dog shortly. Anyway, Ellison finds the box of discarded home movies in the attic and immediately begins studying them, but that night, Ellison’s son Trevor experiences horrible night terrors.
When his screaming finally ends, he asks “Why are we outside? ” and they have to explain the whole thing to him the next morning, which makes me think that Bughuul had already made contact. The next day is October 3rd, which we can see in the metadata of these recordings and pictures that Ellison made of the films from the attic.
Now up to this point, we haven’t really gotten to know any of the kids in these families, they only appear in these very short film reels. If they did something to *deserve* being punished by Bughuul, we haven’t seen any of it. If anything, it seems more like the parents are at fault for moving into a haunted house, though you can’t really blame them for not knowing.
But this would change with the Oswalt family, and their two kids Trevor and Ashley. Trevor gets in trouble at school for drawing a picture of the 4 hanging victims on a whiteboard in permanent marker. It seems like he got this mental image from Bughuul, so it’s kind of a chicken or the egg scenario -- is he really being punished for previously being a bad kid, or is his bad behavior just a symptom of moving into the house?
This could be one area where Bughuul differs from the real ideas of a Boogeyman in our world. During another night disturbance, Ellison hears heavy footsteps in the attic, and discovers a snake, the second of the three animals depicted in the ancient carvings. He also finds this lid, containing sketches of the murder reels he’s been investigating, each one showing a man standing nearby labeled as Mr Boogie, further cementing him as a Boogeyman adjacent deity.
Not long after, Ellison falls through the attic, but on further review we can see several pairs of phantom hands pulling him down through the attic floor. These are the hands of Bughuul’s children, the missing kids who recorded each of the home movies that Ellison has been researching. This is just my interpretation, but I’m guessing that after each tragedy, one of the kids is pulled into Bughuul’s world, just like in the old stories… – [Jonas] Early Christians believed that Bughuul lived in the images themselves and that they were gateways into his realm.
…And from there, they would serve him as ghosts as he slowly fed on their souls, always keeping around the 5 most recent abductees to do his bidding, and I say that because whenever we see a group of Bughuul’s children, they always seem to appear in sets of five. The idea that Bughuul lives in the realm of the images is bolstered the next day when Ellison is studying and Bughuul comes to life on his screen and looks right at him. Ellison continues to experience weird things around the house, and it wouldn’t be long before he and Bughuul would come face to face.
(IMPACT) ♪ Suspenseful Music ♪ On October 4th, Ellison discovered the film projector playing the “Family Hanging Out” footage all on it’s own, which inspired him to try comparing the screenshot he’d printed out of Bughuul to the actual location in his backyard, where he would see the ancient entity with his own eyes for the first time. [clip] Bughuul would quickly disappear, but that’s when Ellison found Trevor shivering in the bushes after another apparent night terror. But when he went back to retrieve his bat, Ellison found himself squared up with a snarling dog, the last of the three animal forms seen in the prehistoric carvings of Bughuul.
The reason Bughuul is toying with him like this is because Ellison is in charge of the family, and in order for the ritual to be enacted, they need to move out of this house so that a new property can be added to the chain. But Ellison is determined to write his book, and doesn’t really believe in the supernatural, so it takes some time to spook him enough to flee Pennsylvania. The idea that he has to be driven out of the house is not something that was pulled from real world mythology as far as I can tell, but it kind of makes sense as a rule.
If the incidents all took place at the same house, it would be much easier for someone to take notice and just condemn the place, or burn it down. But because it’s always a different house, it’s less likely that anyone would have noticed this pattern. Even Ellison doesn’t become aware of it until it’s… too late.
One night there is yet another night disturbance, and Bughuul’s children appear all around Ellison as he explores the house. Meanwhile, the deity seems to have reached or take hold of Stephanie, who paints a diagram of the Family Hang Out scene on her wall along with a portrait of Mr Boogie. The next day Ashley gets in trouble for painting a picture of Stephanie on the wall in the hallway, and this could be another example of misbehavior that Bughuul is punishing, but again, she wouldn’t know about Stephanie if she wasn’t one of the spirits in the house.
It really seems like the idea of a Boogeyman who is trying to punish bad kids is downplayed in this version of the character in favor of an entity who is just downright malicious. Which reminds me a lot of a recent video I did, where I analyzed Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. And by the sound of it, the casting of Bughuul was very similar to the casting of Jason.
Bughuul is played by a stunt actor named Nicolas King, who said he got the role on the basis of his tall slender frame and body language. In an interview with Love Horror, King said his Dad was good friends with Kane Hodder, who played Jason Voorhees in four of the Friday the 13th films, and Kane provided some pointers and tips to get in the right mindset. Anyway, one night Ellison comes across all of Bughuul’s children watching one of the snuff films in the attic, and Bughuul appears to scare him, sending him crashing down out of the attic again.
This is what finally pushes Ellison over the edge and causes him to grab the family and flee the house. I guess Kane Hodder must have given some good instruction. Ellison burns the box of films and rushes out in the middle of the night.
At some point, it’s not exactly clear when, but the calendar turns over to the year 2012, because when Bughuul comes for them at the new house, the reel would eventually be labeled with the year 2012. Shortly after discovering the truth behind Bughuul’s ability to use images as gateways to his world, he attempts to destroy any digital copies he has of his findings at the other house, but soon finds the box of films he thought he’s destroyed in the attic -- it seems to have followed them home. And just like the victims who were sedated in each of the previous videos, Ellison gets woozy and realizes his own drink is drugged.
Everyone is arranged in a room and Ashley, his youngest records herself chopping up the entire family, stopping to shush the camera in the aftermath. This new movie, which is titled “House Painting”, is projected onto the wall, and for the first time we see how Bughuul abducts the children into his netherworld -- he scoops her up and disappears into the video screen. (Horrifying Sounds) So the Oswalt family’s encounter with Bughuul has the same overall outcome of all the others who were unfortunate enough to move into a house previously occupied by one of his victims.
But who would move into the scene of *their* murders? Well… no one. Because the house was burned down by a local deputy who had been working with Ellison on the case, and had figured out the pattern connecting these scattered incidents.
This is Deputy… (Phone ringing) … well we only know him as Deputy So and So. So although that sounds like the dad of a character from Teen Girl Squad, I guess that’s what I have to call him. Shortly after, Deputy So and So was arrested as a suspect to Ellison’s murder case, but he was quickly able to prove his innocence.
After this, he also burned down all of the other houses in the chain, but at some point he must have discovered a new chain of Bughuul’s victims by studying other cases where families were taken out, so as a means of protecting people from Bughuul, he started burning those as well, as long as they were all unoccupied. It was likely three years later that this 2nd chain gained a new set of victims, because Deputy So and So refers back to his arrest a few years ago. – I was arrested a few years ago for a big capital offense.
So if that was 2015, then this 1964 calendar is obviously just for decoration, because that would predate the invention of the Super 8 camera. And it was probably earlier in 2015 that The Jacobs Family had *their* encounter with Bughuul. I’m assuming it was recent, because people in town are still talking about it by the time Deputy So and So gets there.
– Hey, who told you two about what happened in the church? – We just heard about it. – Yeah, everyone knows.
It goes down in a church in Springfield, Illinois, where a new Super 8 film called “Sunday Service” would be recorded. – You’re gonna like this one. It’s my favorite.
(IMPACT) ♪ Intense Music ♪ The main child this time around is named Milo Jacobs. He seems to be the son of a pastor, and the movie begins with him recording a church service. Milo, and what I assume are his other siblings pass out communion bread and wine to the congregation.
This time, it’s the wine that Milo drugs with the supernatural sedative --- his sister can be seen drinking it, but he pours his glass out. Some time that night, he’s got his whole family arranged in a pentagram in the middle of the church separated by candles, and each of them is tied down to the ground under one of these pots. Bughuul appears at the altar and releases an army of rats which are drawn to whatever is in the pots.
After each rat gets in position on top of the family members, Milo turns over each of the pots, forcing the rats to eat their way through human flesh in order to survive. Hot coals are also placed on top of the pots to speed up the urgency of the rats to escape. It’s a diabolical plan, and it makes me wonder if Bughuul read American Psycho at some point.
He can actually be seen in the background of an evidence photo, though it’s also possible that he wasn’t in the original photo, and is just showing up due to his power to reside inside the world of images and video. The Jacobs property consisted of the church and the adjacent house -- and nobody would live in the house until the property owner allowed Courtney Collins and her two boys Dylan and Zach, to move there as a safe space after Courtney’s messy divorce. However, it would be anything but safe; the twin boys would immediately start to see Bughuul and his 5 most recent children.
Dylan in particular is haunted the most, he’s shown disturbing images of what happened at the church, and Milo coerces him to watch all of the video reels of the previous victims in this chain. When Deputy So and So shows up and discovers them living in what is supposed to be an empty house, he realizes there may be no way to save them, but decides to research the family back at his hotel. Here, we see Bughuul’s influence reach past the target family for the first time.
So and So sees his computer glitch out and jump to an article about the church incident, then, Bughuul’s symbol briefly appears and the computer shuts off. When he looks away, Bughuul can be seen in the reflection of his laptop. With the Oswalt family, we saw Bughuul operating from the perspective of Ellison, who was somewhat removed from the main target, his daughter Ashley.
Because of this, we don’t see exactly how Bughuul comes to manipulate these kids. But this time, we see a lot more from the perspective of the kids, Zach and Dylan, and we can learn a little bit more about how he operates. For example, Dylan has nightmares which contain flashes of the snuff film that Bughuul wants him to record, and memories of his abusive past.
Bughuul’s children try to convince him that his entire family is at fault for not protecting him from his father’s abuse. Every time he has one of these dreams, he wakes up and goes downstairs, where he discovers Bughuul and his children, who urge him to watch another home movie to get rid of the nightmares. Which are definitely not helping.
Dylan’s brother Zach can see them too, and he becomes jealous that the children want to use Dylan and not him. Deputy So and So also has a few encounters with Mr Boogie as he does some investigation around the property. I think this is more of the same tactics that Bughuul tried to use on Ellison, he sees Deputy So and So as the father figure and tries to scare him as much as possible so that he’ll move the family to a new house and the ritual can begin.
So Bughuul becomes the millionth horror movie villain to steal the gimmick from Lights Out… (Slow haunting music) … evidence photos come to life, and the deputy even hears his own voice on the ham radio when learning about the 1973 Norwegian Radio incident. Meanwhile, Dylan continues to resist the pressure from the Bughuul’s children. One day he’s hanging out on the porch and sees this spider, but can’t bring himself to kill it.
It’s meant to highlight his good nature, as opposed to his brother Zach, who is more violent, but I think this also may be another animal form of Bughuul. When Deputy So and So meets with the local professor for a lore drop about our favorite black metal deity, he pages through a book containing an image of a spider. It’s very similar to Ellison’s animal encounters which matched the ancient images found in his own Bughuul research.
Eventually, Milo and the other childrens’ attempts to recruit Dylan just end up scaring him away, and an encounter with Bughuul in the church only serves to freak him out more, so they give in and decide to recruit Zach instead. Who is more than happy to watch any horror movies they want to show him. In fact, he’s enamored.
– Zach. Zach. Zach.
Zach! Zach! Zach!
This feels like actual footage of people trying to steal my attention when I’m really into a horror movie. Still, Zach would not be able to kill his family on film unless they moved away from this property, something that Deputy So and So has expressly warned them not to do. However, that changes when the boys’ biological father shows up with a court order, granting him visitation with his sons, and Courtney has no choice but to tag along and try to protect Zach and Dylan from his abuse.
This is another reason I think these events do take place in 2015. The court order says Clint gets visitation on weekends starting July 25th, and he takes them home that day. July 25th was a Saturday in 2015, so that is probably the current date.
So they all move back to the Father’s house, where as expected, Zach finds the Super 8 camera and Bughuul’s children encourage him to make his own murder reel to get revenge on his family for allowing his father’s abuse This one begins with Clint trying to teach Dylan how to golf, and Zach comes in an mixes the sedative into their drinks in the cooler. By that night he has them all strung up on crosses with bags over their heads and films himself lighting a trail of gasoline which torches his father first. But before he can ignite the lighter on his brother, a Deputy So and So figures out what’s about to happen, emerges from the field in his truck and hits Zach, allowing him to save Courtney and Dylan.
But that only puts him down temporarily, and after some encouragement from Milo, Zach grabs a sickle and takes off after his family. (IMPACT) ♪ Intense Music ♪ As everyone runs back to the house, the former Deputy tries going back to stop the homicidal child, but Zach can’t be deterred, slicing off several of So and So’s fingers -- and he barely gets away. As Zach searches the house, Bughuul’s children rucksack the place, making it look like objects are moving on their own, like something out of a traditional haunted house.
But just when Zach locates his mom and brother, Deputy So and So reaches him and uses the golf club to destroy the camera, putting an end to his recording, and temporarily stopping the Bughuul ritual. – No. No, no, no.
No. NOOOO! !
! ! !
! ! !
Me, that one time my copy of Scream 3 got scratched. Bughuul’s children tell him that their Boogeyman will be mad that he failed the ritual. Zach backs up into the man himself, Bughuul, and he’s absorbed into the movie on the projector as his skin crumbles away, ultimately becoming the latest child of the Boogeyman.
Somehow, the screen this movie was projected on lights on fire? Not the projector, but the screen itself, and this ultimately leads to the entire house burning down. It’s strange how this unfolds, because it’s almost like Bughuul is intentionally setting fire to the house -- as if he’s sending a message to Deputy So and So: “you can burn down as many houses as you like, but I’ll always have another property in the line that I can backtrack to.
” And it becomes very clear that Bughuul is still out there, when the ham radio turns on and Zach’s voice starts calling his name, or at least his title. – Deputy… [jump scare] To me, it feels like Bughuul is mocking his opponent, rubbing it in that nothing he can do will ever stop him. Which makes him a perfect representative for the title of Boogeyman.
After all, it was Tommy Doyle who said… – [Tommy] You can't kill The Boogeyman. But like I mentioned, the big difference between Sinister’s main antagonist and most of the Boogeyman depictions in various cultures across history is the lack of focus on the morality play. The Oswalt kids did have their moments of bad behavior… both involving them writing on walls… and Zach was mean to his brother, but Dylan was never really shown to have been a bad kid, and nobody ever says anything along the lines of “if you misbehave, the Boogeyman will get ya!
” After researching a little bit, I found that not all Boogeyman legends have this aspect of being a consequence for misconduct. In Britannica’s encyclopedia page on the Boogeyman, they write: “Sometimes children develop a concept of the bogeyman on their own. When children begin to try to make sense of the world around them, they often experience fear, uncertainty, and anxiety.
” So in these stories, it’s quite possible that Bughuul exists as more of a manifestation of existing fears and anxieties. For the Oswalts, there’s a heavy emphasis on how Ellison’s work as a true crime author might be affecting the children, causing them to be exposed by proximity to the details of these gruesome cases from a young age. And this is the source of many fights between Ellison and his wife For the Collins kids, there’s a lot of anxiety around the return of their abusive father, and things go down with Bughuul when he comes back into their lives.
Both movies share this idea of shielding the kids, because kids represent your legacy. – And your legacy? That's Ashley and Trevor.
Your kids are your legacy. – [Courtney] It's antique restoration, actually. It feels almost magical to turn something worn out into something that's.
. . something that's beautiful again, you know?
Like, polished and worthwhile. Something that's gonna be here long after you're gone. – [So and So] Yeah.
Like kids. – [Courtney] Yeah, like kids. So by manipulating the kids to commit horrific, newsworthy crimes everywhere he goes, maybe Bughuul represents the opposite of that.
Like the Boogeyman legend in the real world, he’s constantly adapting to fit a new generation, whether he’s using wood carvings, ham radio, Super 8 film… well, to be honest, I don’t know why he never moves to new technology after that, but I guess having a kid make a shock movie on the Nintendo 3DS camera app is just not quite as eerie as a good old reel of film. Which is part of why I think there probably will be a 3rd Sinister installment eventually, but it will most likely be set in the past. Plus, with Deputy So and So having figured out the pattern behind the killings, I feel like you almost have to go back and explore a story with some characters who are a little more left in the dark.
It would also be cool to see one of those hauntings outside of the US. Maybe it’s for the better that we never fully get a grasp on Bughuul’s background and motivations. In an interview with Collider, Scott Derrickson talked about striking a balance between adding lore and leaving things up to mystery.
“I think the more common tendency is to show too much and to expand the mythology in a way that demystifies the character or to show the character’s presence so much that it demystifies the character and once the character’s demystified, it’s not scaring you anymore. ” Ciaran Foy seems to understand that too. – [Ciaran] Part of Bughuul’s power is that he’s steeped in mystery.
This is probably part of the reason that Bughuul and the Sinister franchise have been in limbo for so long, but it’s hard to imagine they won’t eventually find a way to do it without ruining the character. Like The Boogeyman in our world, this child eating shadow man always has potential to frighten a new generation. If you want to see my analysis of more Blumhouse horror icons, check out that playlist on the left.
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