Deliver us from dumbness

Rating: 5/10 (25 November 2012)

Critics praised and the public turned-out so see it in decent numbers. I found it dull, toothless and disappointing. I could stop there. However, IMDb requires more word-burning, so...
True crime book writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is on the skids, desperate to come up with another hit bestseller. To this end, he moves his wife, son and daughter to a house in the sticks where the previous occupants were found hanged from a tree out back and the youngest daughter remains missing. He omits to inform his wife and kids of this information, because it's the sort of stuff that might influence a decision to buy or live in a particular property, and sets out on his merry investigative way.
Hawke finds a collection of old 8mm films in the loft. They depict a series of murders of several families. Hawke reasons that someone must have filmed these events (smart guy) but who could it have been? The killer, perhaps? This is the point where it all falls apart and reason and logic evaporate into the ether never to be seen or heard from again.
Right, yes, I know that horror/fantasy flicks arbitrarily require that logical behaviour need not fully apply and characters are fully within their rights to behave in ways that in the real world would give others some reasonable pause for thought. It's a given. This has to remain, though, to some acceptable degree, within logically explainable parameters in order to suspend disbelief and not alienate the audience and consequently erode their patience and goodwill.
Now, I can accept the supernatural rationale for events, because in SINISTER's particular cinematic world it is the chosen raison d'être of the movie. And that's fine. But anyone who finds a box full of snuff films on their property and watches them and after doing so decides that it would be a really great idea not to turn them over to the police has just drop-kicked the living daylights out of all conception of what constitutes reasonable behaviour – even for a character in a horror flick.
OK, it can be argued Hawke's character is under pressure, he's desperate to write a hit true crime expose, but come on! He's unearthed new evidence the police don't have. Handing it over makes him a part of the case, puts him square in the picture, part of the focus rather than an outsider and does not jeopardise in any way his chances of completing the book he wants to write. Rather, it increases them by getting the rather hostile fuzz onside. So concealing this new found evidence is intended to achieve what, exactly? Answers on a postcard.
My sympathy for the character dissolved and with it much of my interest in the way things would then play out. An evil pagan entity is influencing kids to snuff their families and then join him in some spiritual parallel-dimension netherworld once the deed is done. This provides lots of scenes of ghostly looking zombie kids popping up at random moments and putting their fingers to their lips and going "Shhhhh!" in an attempt to elicit some jump-scares, but really that's all it amounts to. Predictably, as is the way with most modern horror movies these days, everyone is doomed, evil triumphs, that's how it concludes.
It's a shame, because the lead-in up to the point where Hawke makes his decision about the films is cleverly constructed and quite creepy and unnerving. There is a sense of genuine style, flair and atmosphere-building bubbling away. Then it vaporises.
Recently, INSIDIOUS suffered from much the same problem – an excellent build-up blown to bits by a crass second half of irrationality and a humdrum cookie-cutter denouement. It would be nice if more often than not these movies were fashioned to deliver on their earlier promise. Dare to be different.