This is supposed to be a horror film?

Rating: 4/10 (10 March 2014)

Originally when I got this movie in the mail from Netflix, I had high hopes after reading a lot of positive reviews, but this movie ultimately falls short as a horror film for many reasons.
First, the pacing of the Sinister is dreadfully slow and we don't see anything 'scary' until about 40 minutes in. Almost the whole movie, I was waiting for something to jump out and scare me and those moments never came. The few 'fright' scenes are 100% predictable, unoriginal and often didn't make sense.
For example, there is a scene in the movie where Ellison's son is sleepwalking and is found in the backyard. When Ellison goes outside to retrieve him, there is a Rottweiler randomly in his backyard along with a bunch of dead kids. What was the point of the dog? And why are there a bunch of dead kids in your backyard?
Those dead kids. I'm sure they were supposed to be scary, but their makeup made them look laughable and ridiculous. They were running all over Ellison's house and dashing into rooms in slow motion and Ellison is oblivious to this the whole time. Then there was the main monster, who looked more like a member from Insane Clown Posse. His name is the Bughuul and there is no back story at all as to who this guy/demon is; we don't see him enough to fully understand his character.
Another thing that bothered me was the majority of the movie was filmed in the house; there were very few scenes that didn't take place in their home. It would have even been nice if Ellison left his house to do some research or if there were different shot locations. Ellison's family also experiences problems in town due to the unpopularity of Ellison's current crime novel. The mom says people give her dirty looks at the grocery store and their son gets teased at school. It would have been nice if we had seen some of these scenes because they would have added more to the story.
The last thing that I will say about Sinister is that during the whole movie Ellison is wearing a woman's sweater. I could not get over this. His sweater literally looks like something you would find at Forever 21. Sinister loses a lot of points because of that woman sweater. Over all Sinister wasn't that bad. It had a lot of potential with the cinematography and the shot compositions, but failed to use that to properly scare the viewer. It's presented more as a mystery than a horror flick. If you want to see a better movie with a bunch of dead kids running around, watch The Orphanage (El Orfanato).