Positively creepy and thrilling, but not without some major flaws

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2012)

It's quite frustrating being a horror fan. Most of us have grown up watching scary movies, loving the feeling of getting so scared you couldn't fall asleep at night. However, as a kid it is much easier getting scared. The older you get the more you get accostumed with the genre and its thrills. You start to see patterns and the formula wears thin before too long. Horror movies that start off as promising as "Sinister" in its first hour are extremely seldom and when they do come along, our fan hearts jump.
It's not that Scott Derrickson's movie is all that original. Actually, it's more or less another found footage movie with some creepy kids thrown in (more about that later), but the director sets it up so well that you find yourself creeped out and intrigued right from the start. Ethan Hawke's character is given enough depth that we can somehow understand why he would not be taking his family and running away as far as possible within the first five minutes. Derrickson moves things along at exactly the right pace and stays away from cheap scares . The dark house that serves as a setting for most of the film adds a lot of tension, and you never feel safe watching the screen and the movie stays relentlessly tense throughout. Like most good horror movies (see also The Omen, The Ring, In The Mouth Of Madness) there's a mystery that builds up to the horror, like Derrikson had his hand on some kind of scary lever and he kept turning it up with sadistic delight.
This very good start makes it all the more frustrating when Derrickson makes some painful choices in the last third. You know you'e in trouble when creepy kids starts to appear. Too many people making horror movies seem to think that kids are really creepy per se (probably due in part to some of those movies mentioned above). The fact is, they're not, not in this movie at least. These kids are so obviously excited child actors with bad make-up on. As soon as the movie starts to rely on them, you know you can relax. It's like that moment in "Say Anything" when John Cusack and whatshername are tense on a plane until they see the seat belt sign go off and they know there's nothing to fear anymore. We know from this moment that things aren't going to get any scarier and it really kills the movies momentum. It doesn't help that Derrickson throws in some of those scares where a big creepy face pops up directly in front of the camera. We've all been victim to this on the internet when we're tricked into concentrating on an image on the screen and all of a sudden some terrible monster face appears and almost makes you soil your pants. That's okay for the internet, in a movie it's awfully uncreative and lame, and although you probably will jump at those scenes, the feeling will be followed by immediate annoyance and disappointment.
The second, any maybe even bigger problem, is that the movie doesn't have a third act. As in one of Derrickson's previous movies, "The Exorcism Of Emily Rose", the director doesn't seem to know how to end the movie. Just like in "Emily Rose" the final act cannot live up to the great set up that preceded it. The movie ends really quickly without a huge revelation or a big fight or anything. It just ends and leaves you feeling disappointment.
All that doesn't make "Sinister" a failure. In fact, this is probably the best horror movie I've seen all year (not that there's been a lot of competition). It's just a pity that Derrickson couldn't hold up the high quality throughout the movie's entire running time, because then this could have been one of the rare examples of a horror film that satisfies even hard boiled fans of the genre. "Sinister" does make one look forward to Derrickson's next problem, although one can only hope that the man will soon learn how to give his films proper endings.
(Piece of advice: If you can, avoid the trailers before watching "Sinister", as most of the highlights are given away. It surely ruined a lot of fun for me, when I watched the movie and was already familiar with the best bits.)