Surprisingly one of the most disturbing and creepy films I've ever seen!

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 2014)

Ellison Oswalt has a loving wife, two wonderful kids... so why is he not even telling them that their new home is a crime scene where in 2011 a family was hanged!? Well, he's a true crime writer, not really a bad guy but willing to put his career (and not a very popular one at that), before his own family. While moving in, he sees that his daughter truly hates the new place and he tries convincing her to enjoy it, to no avail. He also gets told off by a cop for exploiting tragedy for fame and cash. Ellison's real troubles begin when he finds a box of 8mm film reels, seemingly of fun family moments, dating as far back as 1966. But when he puts them on, he has no idea what the hell he's found. Each home video is exactly like those grainy, nostalgic family films, but instead of birthday parties, camping trips and school presentations, they're all murders of different families, ranging from typical horror murders (stabbing), to downright sadistic (the pool party one was disturbing beyond belief). Ellison has hindsight about moving but won't admit it, even when both his children begin acting crazy and his wife starts constantly arguing with him. As he goes further and further through decades of murder, he discovers a family from 1979 that was burned alive in a car while sappy seventies music played in the background. He finds a child mowed over with a lawnmower. When he spots a strange-looking man standing at the bottom of the pool watching happily as a family is slowly drowned, he realizes that something sinister is at work, and it isn't just a human serial killer.
I really liked Sinister, more for the atmosphere it evoked than anything else. My problem with it is that despite its originality, the only thing that made it stand out over other movies in its genre was the found footage method. Super 8 has a grainy, nostalgic look that's difficult to mimic with just a webcam or camcorder and it can either be seen as just home movie material or an artistic medium. Sinister's snuff films are hat really disturbed me, not the rest of the movie. I mean, anyone can throw a few rotten, ghostly kids and a child-stealing demon together in a horror movie, and this film has numerous horror clichés, from Ellison's kids seeming to have a sixth sense to the presence of something in the house to a boy with night terrors to a group of rotten corpse children drifting around. All of these things can and have been done already in one way or another throughout the horror genre. But the way not only Sinister presents the super-8 films with eerie music and horrific material, but also shows a great amount of respect for super 8 film, is what makes this movie better than The Ring, Paranormal Activity or The Conjuring. The acting was pretty good, especially the roles of Ellison himself, "Mr. Boogie" and the Deputy. It was great to see that Dakota Fanning or Elle Fanning weren't picked for the role of Stephanie, finally they picked a child actor who isn't an overused bratty celebrity! The soundtrack was really eerie (the "Sleepy Time" film scene had some of the best). And the plot? Well, child-stealing demons have been done before but never as creepy as this. It's not really a scary film to me, more disturbing than scary. Deputy So&So was awesome, I hope he has a much bigger role in the second Sinister movie. After all, he and the nerdy occult professor were the only survivors who knew about Buguul.
(If I had written the screenplay for Sinister, I would've called one of the 8mm films "Spring Cleaning" and had a child mixing household chemicals like ammonia and bleach together to fill their house with their family in it, now THAT would be creepy! The possibilities for a movie like Sinister are endless).