Sinister

Rating: 8/10 (16 October 2012)

I saw some trailers for this film and thought it looked interesting to try, and I saw positive reviews from critics, annoyed that I missed The Possession at the cinema (which also looked good) I wasn't going to miss this one, from director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Day the Earth Stood Still). Basically the film opens as a Super 8 film seeing a family four with bags on their heads being hanged with rope nooses from a tree, and an unseen figure snaps the opposite trunk that is acting as a counter weight, sending them up and strangling them to death. Months later, struggling true-crime novel writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) has moved his family: wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance), young daughter Ashley (Clare Foley) and teenage son Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario), who suffers night terrors, into this house where the murder occurred, he is hoping to write his next novel based on this horrific event, and the fact that a fifth member of the family went missing when it happened. While moving boxes into the attic Ellis comes across a box containing a projector and several reels of Super 8 film, each with innocent looking family home movie labels, and setting up the projector and a white sheet on the wall he decides to watch one the films. The film called Family Hanging Out '11 starts as just a normal innocent home movie with the family, but then he is shocked to see it change scene and show the murder of the family, being hanged (the film seen at the beginning) on screen. He watches the rest of the home movies one by one, and he is continually shocked by seeing other families murdered and their deaths caught on film, including Sleepy Time '98 seeing a family having their throats slit in bed, BBQ '79 seeing a family burned to death in arson in their car, Pool Party '66 seeing a family pulled into their pool to be drowned, and Lawn Work '86 seeing a family run over by a lawn mower. Ellis was originally going to report what he has found to the police, but he decides not to because he feels he could be on to both a winning book, and all the murders are surely connected, despite the distance of time the murders have occurred, and he keeps seeing a dark figure in each film that is most likely the killer. After seeing this dark figure the first time, after using his computer to edit and re-watch the footage, strange things start happening in the house, including noises coming from the attic, but he continues to investigate the films, and each one also contains a symbol painted in each murder scene, so he decides to get help from outsider sources for his research. A Deputy (James Ransone) helps him to find out where all of the murders caught on camera happened based on the years labelled, and he refers to college Professor Jonas (Vincent D'Onofrio) who has expertise on religion to decipher what the strange symbols mean, and he concludes that is to do with the Pagan deity named Bughuul who was known for eating children's souls, including killing a child and taking into a dark realm. One night Ellis hears the projector running in the attic, and investigating he sees five children watching one of the films, all of them are the missing children from the murders, and then Bughuul the demon appears and Ellis falls causing an injury to his ankle. He and Tracy have an argument that he is spending too much time trying to write his new novel and that the family could be in danger or moving into the house of a murder scene, but eventually he realises she is right and the situation is becoming too dangerous, so he burns the projector and films and gets the family packed and ready to move back. Having moved back into their old house Ellis is putting some boxes back, and he is shocked to see the projector and films intact in the box in the attic, but there is also a new film inside called Extended Endings, and when he watches it he sees all the murders again, but they follow with the missing child of the family coming on screen and revealing themselves as the murderers, before disappearing. After getting some more insight from Professor Jonas about the symbols and the Bughuul legend he is visited by the Deputy, who he has been ignoring calls from, he gives him the information that all the murdered families lives in the same house the last murder took place, meaning Ellis has put him and his family in danger as the pattern may continue. Feeling lightheaded Ellis made himself a cup of coffee, and he notices a strange liquid left in it, and he sees a note from his daughter before passing out, and when he wakes up he and his family are tied up and gagged together just like the families before them. Ashley walks in clutching the Super 8 film camera and an axe, she films as she murders her father, mother and brother, and paints the walls with images of unicorns, cats and dogs with their blood, and she watches the film back again where she also appears on screen, the other dead children appear but run away when Bugheel appears and takes Ashley into the film projection, and the last moment sees the box with the projector and films containing a film called House Painting '12 in the Oswalt attic. Also starring Fred Dalton Thompson as Sheriff and Victoria Leigh as Stephanie. Hawke gives a good performance as the man determined if not obsessed to get to the bottom of the crimes and write a successful book, the story is well paced and has a good amount of jumps and gripping moments, it is a good old fashioned scary movie, a terrific supernatural horror. Very good!