The film starts off well enough, to be sure. The very first thing we see is an old 8 mm film of what appears to be a family of four being hanged from a tree. Aside from the obvious disturbing nature of what we're seeing, it's a very effectively creepy moment because it is quiet, underplayed and subtle (which is unfortunately the last time I'll be able to say that). We don't see who is killing them, because that's going to be the mystery that our main character is going to be trying to unravel. Not that it's hard for us to figure out, but it's best to get used to being smarter than the characters whenever you watch any horror movie, just as a general rule.
Our protagonist is Ellison (Ethan Hawke), a true-crime novelist who has hit a patch of hard times recently, and has started writing a new book which he hopes will be his return to success. The book will be about the hangings we saw in the opening scene. So he moves with his wife (who irritatingly doesn't know the difference between "hanged" and "hung") and two kids to the small town where the hangings happened, as I guess it's required that he actually take up residence in the town where the crime happened in order for him to write about it. I have no explanation for that. Even more perplexing is that not only does he evidently need to live in the same town, but he's gone and moved himself and his family into the murder house, while somehow keeping that gem of an idea a secret from them. Because THAT'S a great idea, right?
The movie hasn't even started and already you're a titanic douchebag.
When Ellison finds a box in the attic containing a projector and old 8 mm films, he does what any normal person would do and watches one of them - which turns out to be the video of the hanging we saw in the beginning of the film. He then proceeds to do what most people wouldn't do, and keeps watching them. There's also film of families getting drowned, getting burned alive, getting their throats cut, all that various good stuff. And he never tells anyone about it. Here is the first point when Ellison as a character becomes pretty unlikable.
I understand that he's intrigued by the mystery, and the investigator in him needs to solve it, but there does come a point where common sense should play a little bit of a role. He's got snuff films in his attic which clearly could only have been left by either the killer, someone directly involved in the killings, some evil supernatural force, or all the above. I think at that point the safety of your family should start to become a real concern.
You know, as silly as this was, I'm sure it looked even sillier on paper.
And I'm not saying that it's completely unreasonable that a person would ever do that. It's true that Ellison is stuck in an awkward situation where he's running the risk of losing his wife if his circumstances were to come to light, but not only did he put himself in that position, the underlying reason he's doing all this is because he doesn't want to write anything but true crime novels. It's made clear that he does have options of doing other things to support his family like writing textbooks or whatnot, but he feels it's beneath him and he refuses to do it. So our main character is a guy whose professional pride is the reason he refuses to GTFO when all the crazy spooky stuff starts going down around his wife and kids. Nice guy.
But even though he's a tool, Ellison isn't a bad character, and Ethan Hawke actually does a good job in portraying him. I enjoyed his performance, and it's a credit to Hawke's acting that he made me kind of like Ellison. Even though he was a total chump, he was a believable chump. And there was something intriguing about his blind obsession with needing to know the truth no matter the cost that was in itself something like another layer of whatever horror "Sinister" is trying to convey.
I'm not saying it was completely effective here, but some of the best horror movies know that one of the scariest things you can have is a character that knows they shouldn't do something, but they also know that they have no choice, either through circumstance or basic human need. It's that Lovecraftian angle that knows damn well that you're going to read that Forbidden Tome of Ultimate Knowledge even though it's a forgone conclusion that it will drive you insane, and that's the nature of man. You're going to read the Tome, you're going to open the head-sized box sent from the serial killer, and you're going to smell that milk that expired 2 weeks ago. Because dammit, you need to know.
Pictured - The Great Struggle of Man
And that leads into the best bit of Ellison's character arc, which is closer to the end when he plows forward into this darkness that he finds himself trapped in, even though he knows that it's really, really bad to do so. The image of Hawke, whiskey in hand, sitting beside the projector that has mysteriously reappeared after he had previously burned it, flipping the switch to play the last reel of film was one of the more chilling aspects of "Sinister." You know he's screwed, he knows he's screwed, but at that point he just doesn't care. He's got to know.
For the sake of spoilers I'm not going to give away what's going on, but that doesn't mean it's a twist of "Bruce Willis was dead" proportions. It's actually pretty obvious what's happening, which leads into the other problem with the character of Ellison, which is that for a guy who solves unsolved crimes for a living, he's sure slow to pick up on the obvious. True, there's a supernatural angle going on that he refuses to believe, which is understandable, but even from a forensics standpoint there are some things that are painfully obvious that anyone could have noticed.
I'm just saying that when you have film reels of families getting murdered with no motive or suspect to be found, and in each and every case the one child who was not seen on the tapes went missing afterwards, at some point I'd entertain the possibility that perhaps, JUST PERHAPS the child had something to do with it. I'm just saying.
This isn't the fault of "Sinister," to be fair. It's just that we've had so many movies like this that twists of this nature can be seen coming a mile away. That's a shame, but there it is. If you watch movies with regularity you know what's up. I can see how it would be shocking though if you didn't, because honestly it is pretty messed up what happens. And that is far more effective at being creepy than the overused jump scares that litter this film, which ends up being its biggest detriment.
The last shot of the film. Seriously. What are you doing? Why did you suddenly bend over at 150 mph and tilt your head to the side? What are you looking at? The camera? Is this a fourth wall break? You've never broken the fourth wall before. Why now? Do you know that the end credits are coming? Do you know you're in a movie? Can you hear the music? Does music always erupt from the aether whenever you bend over?
I could go on for days about how much I hate jump scares, but I won't. There's a big difference between being scared and being startled, but most horror films seem to think the two are interchangeable, oftentimes completely relying on the later since it requires far less work since building atmosphere is tougher than simply banging pots together and yelling "Boo." This film is no different, as things will jump out at the screen at us, proceeded by an orchestral sting loud enough to rupture spleens. To the film's credit I can't recall any time when something innocuous was used in an attempt to scare, as there were no kittens jumping out of closets, but at the same time it seems afraid that we won't think something is scary enough without the loud boom.
Honestly there are some really creepy parts in "Sinister," and all of the best ones involve (shock) no music. There's only about two of them, but those moments made me sad because had the rest of the film been as subtle and clever as that, then we're talking really scary stuff. I mean actually scary, not akin to playing with a jack-in-the-box.
Like this bit. Who'd have thought the best scare in the film would have no music sting?
And that's what I was mostly talking about with the whole "shoot yourself in the foot" thing I mentioned earlier. This could have been a really scary film. Instead it's just kind of creepy as long as you don't think about it too hard, and it's not confident enough in itself to believe that what it has to offer is actually frightening. Instead it throws the jumps scares at us to artificially make it scary for people who don't understand the difference. That's a shame.
If you want to watch the entire film in 2 minutes and 30 seconds...here's the trailer.
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Sinister" was an alright film. Definitely better than some of the other horror films released recently, but it's still kind of "meh" at best. It gets points for some good acting and a couple of well done segments, but like most horror movies it's too reliant on jumps scares for me to give it too much credit or recommendation.
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