It was okay

Rating: 5/10 (25 October 2012)

Sinister is greater than the sum of its parts for sure, but still not a great movie.
It's jumpy-scary without being scary-scary. All the scares are boo noises, without that element of pervasive dread that really makes a movie stick with you. Sinister is over when you leave the theater.
The soundtrack was the weakest link for me, with the thin dialog coming in a close second. Practical and special effects looked like something your average Norwegian Black Metal band could throw together in a self-produced music video. In fact, the boogie man himself bore a remarkable resemblance to King Diamond (which you can tell from the trailer). The movie would have been better off not showing that character at all.
Despite the problems with dialog, the actors did a good job looking scared. The jumps were jumpy, so even though that's a lame effect it did its job. There's nothing here Hollywood hasn't done a million times before. Like too many American movies, everything gets explained in way too much detail, leaving no stone left ambiguous.
Best part of the filmmaking was the cinematography, hands down. Each reel was crafted with close attention to period-accurate detail. These were the most believable parts of the movie. I'm glad we didn't descend into shaky-cam ridiculousness; we could actually see what was going on in each frame, which was nice.
All in all, Sinister is probably the scariest of the Horror McNuggets. If you're going to see it, see it in the theater because it isn't going to work without surround sound. But I would wait until it hits the dollar theater. It just isn't worth 10$.