Sinister Movie Review 272

Sinister is a 2012 horror movie directed by Scott Derrickson(The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and starring Ethan Hawke and Fred Thompson.

In the beginning of the film, we see a family hanging from a tree with hoods over their heads. They are then hanged by some unseen force. Cut to true crime writer Ellison Oswalt(Hawke), his wife Tracy(Juliet Rylance), daughter Ashley and son Trevor. They are moving into a new house as Ellison is writing a book about a young girl who disappeared after her family were murdered. What he doesn't tell his family is that the house they are moving into is the murdered family's house. Ellison is looking up in the attic when he finds a box of home movies. He hooks them up to a projector and starts to watch. They start normally enough but then he sees families being murdered by someone who is unseen on the camera. He is disturbed by these movies but doesn't take them to the cops. He spots something in each of the movies. There is some sort of demon lurking in the background and there are symbols on the walls.

He becomes obsessed with finding out who this demon is. He starts to hear noises etc in the house and strange things happen with his son. A local cop listens to his story and he gets him some information on the murders. His wife seems oblivious to all these happenings. The murders are all connected and the local cop thinks that it must be a serial killer. Ellison talks to a professor called Jonas(Cameo from Vincent D'Onofrio)who tells him that the symbols are connected to a pagan deity called Bughuul. This thing needs the souls of children to survive. He lures the children in and then he traps them and takes them with him.He took one of the children from each of the murdered families. Has he come for Ellison's children? This is where the film began to dip. I think that it was just too slow in parts and even though I did like the premise, it was poorly executed. Hawke is a good actor and I liked him as the writer, but seeing him walking around in the middle of the night hearing voices in his moth eaten cardigan began to annoy me after a while. There was very little actual scares in this film and it was very easy to predict the end which was disappointing. The actress who played the wife was awful and the kids were irritating.I was very let down by this film.The only reason I stuck with it was Hawke. He did the best he could with the part. 

I won't give away the ending just in case you might want to see it, but in my opinion, this just wasn't great. It was just another by the numbers horror movie and it is best forgotten which is a real pity. I have seen low budget movies which are way better than this and I did like this directors other movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose which was way better. I will give it a 4/10. If you have seen Sinister, what did you think of it?