Let's "Hang Out" and have a "BBQ"

Rating: 10/10 (4 November 2012)

Struggling true crime writer Hawke moves his family into a country home where, unknown to his family, a quadruple murder occurred the previous year. Years earlier, he solved an old unsolved crime, published a book about it, and is now looking to repeat the process, and further extend his fifteen minutes of fame. While stowing away his belongings in the attic one night, he stumbles onto old home movies of the killing, as well as others, some dating back to the 1960s. Hawke then obsessively watches the footage, analyzing each frame, hoping to catch a glimpse of the killer, which he does- but when he sees the killer standing in the shrubbery in his backyard . . . . .
Supremely creepy, it also moves along at a good pace, despite a nearly two-hours long run time; the home movies of the killings are effectively horrifying, several great jump-scares (especially the bit with the lawn mower) and a genuinely frightening villain in the barely glimpsed Bughuul (Boogeyman) ; this is a great movie to watch in a cinema on Halloween night.
Minor quibble: we cannot decide whether or not we like its anticlimactic, non-ending. But the film still stuck in our minds long after we left the cinema, making it difficult to get to sleep that night. Very well done horror.