Sinister

This is supposed to be a psychological horror film, but I didn't find much of it scary at all. There are a few yuk moments when, along with the main character, you want to look away but can't quite stop watching. I think there were a couple of attempted jumps... but they were totally telegraphed so didn't have any effect.

I did find the film intriguing though. The idea seemed quite original and I wanted to find out what was going on. That's all that kept me watching, in spite of the clichéd creeping around alone in the dark for no good reason.

SPOILERS

The plot is quite simple on the surface. Ethan Hawke plays one-hit-wonder true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt who is desperate for another crack at the big time. He moves his family to the house where the previous owners were hanged and their daughter disappeared, in the hope of writing a best-seller about it. His family know there was a murder in the area (as that is what Oswalt always writes about) but don't know they are living in the actual house where it happened. They aren't happy at moving again, as clearly Oswalt has clearly been fruitlessly chasing his next hit for 10 years.

Nice introduction. Some interesting characters. Plenty of possibilities.

Then things get weird. Oswalt finds a box of old Super 8 films in the attic along with a projector. He rigs up a screen and watches the most recent film first. It shows the family being hanged by an unseen assailant. Wow, he's only been on the case a day and has hard evidence already! Of course he wonders how the film got there and who shot it...

It takes several days for Oswalt to get round to watching the other films. This is silly. The only reason for this is so that the plot can be strung out and we can see some clumsy character development. Also, obviously, Oswalt can only watch the films alone at night after everyone has gone to sleep so that he can be scared by the creaky house and "footsteps" in the attic.

Despite the clunkiness of the plot, it is quite intriguing. The films show other families being murdered in novel horrific ways, seemingly by the person who shot the Super 8 movies. These scenes aren't particularly graphic. The horror comes from the suggestion of what is happening rather than the depiction of it - which I like in a horror film.

Obviously the murders are linked and we eventually find out that there is an ancient Bogey Man who "eats children" and has been on the loose since Babylonian times. OK, right.

Just as Sinister looks likely to descend into a terrible ending with the "good guy" battling the demon, it surprises you. Oswalt does what he should have done on day 2 and decides to get himself and his family away from the death house ... immediately. And he does. They leave and don't come back.

This wrong footed me for a moment, and got me thinking "OK, so the demon must follow them somehow". And of course he does. Oswalt gets a call from his police insider who tells him that all the families that were murdered had lived in the house where the previous murders occurred.

Oh shit. At this point Oswalt might have been wise to move back to the death house... but that might not have worked anyway. Instead he goes up to his attic and finds the box of Super 8 films and the projector there ... which I forgot to mention that he burned before he left the death house.

This freaks him out a bit, as you might expect. He tips the box over and spots an envelope labelled "Extended Cuts". It might as well have read "Ha, Ha. Gotcha!" because the previously unseen clips of film show that each of the murders was in fact committed by the child which then went "missing".

Crikey. What does he do now? Is one of his children going to be possessed and try to kill him? No. His daughter is already possessed and has already drugged him. He wakes up to find his wife and son gagged and bound like him. In a nice touch the girl says "Don't worry Daddy, I'll make you famous again." before killing them all with an axe. She captures it all on film, of course.

The movie ends with the girl being carried away by the Bogey Man and then the box of Super 8 film sitting neatly in the attic.

So, quite neat I thought. There are plenty of flaws obviously, but on the whole Sinister is quite entertaining in a, ahem, sinister way. I particularly liked the suggestion that Oswalt's fate was caused by his own reckless fame-hunting at his family's expense... shame that his family shared that fate... but that's demons for you!