Solid, at times flawed, horror film

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2012)

Sinister is a solid spook tale involving a creepy deity and an author trying to piece together the mystery of slaughtered families and missing children. Ethan Hawke turns in a strong performance as the nearly has-been author who, while trying his hand at writing a non-fiction true crime book, discovers some telling and disturbing super 8 films involving shocking murders. The film is well paced and well made. The grainy films of the crimes committed are truly shocking and offer up the film's strongest, most disturbing moments. The perpetual atmosphere of dread is also effective as is Christopher Young's inventively freaky musical score. The good however does not hide Sinister's less successful aspects, chief among them the villains at the core of the story. The Mr. Boogie demon is simply too bland to be as scary as the film assumes he is and the brew of killer ghost children lack any sense of creepiness (the unimpressive make up on the child actors is partly to blame) Sadly this prevents what could have been a true fright fest from achieving great heights of terror. The producers were unable to recapture the clever and genuine scares of Insidious. It's worth look for affecionados of the genre.