Sinister turned out to be a pretty good horror film

Rating: 7/10 (10 November 2014)

This film is like Lords of Salem, in that I have been wanting to see it for a while and finally got the chance one night. Unlike Lords of Salem, this one was pretty good. It was not spectacular or anything and like a lot of horror films it lacks certain things and certain things are done in such a way to prevent it from being super good, but it was still an enjoyable enough horror film. It made me wonder where it was going, the acting pretty good and it had some nice creepy imagery. With that it also had plot points that went nowhere and an ending that while not completely disappointing still left me feel it was lacking and not satisfactory. Of course, compare it to most recent horror films it was greatlike Lords of Salem for instance. Sorry, but I had seen that one recently at the time of me writing this review and it just stunk on ice. Granted, it is better than all those numerous PG-13 rated flicks that populate the cinemas these days and those once a year lazy flicks that essentially have extremely small budgets and repeat the same things over and over again.
The story has a true crime novelist wishing to write about a heinous crime where a family was hung and the little girl of the family is now missing. The author makes his new home the very home where this terrible crime took place. The sheriff does not like the idea of him writing about this particular crime and his wife is iffy about the circumstances as well. Of course, had the author told his wife that they had just moved into the very house where this crime took place she probably would have been way more iffy! Well, the man starts trying to connect the dots and get inside the crime, he is aided by a mysterious box full of movies that are apparently of the victims. They seem to be nothing more 'sinister' than home movies of first depicting the family during happy times, but as they progress the author sees that there is a darkness within them as soon the film shows the family being murdered. This shakes up the author, but due to his seemingly wanting to be famous once again he presses on rather than inform the authorities about his grisly find (he wrote a best seller, but has fallen on a bit of a cold streak). He soon looks deeper and finds a strange figure present during all the murders and this figure seems to be living within the film itself.
So yes, one of the things that made this film good was the interesting concept. It was spooky seeing author (played by Ethan Hawke) watch the films and they did a good job making them spooky. At the same time, the film did rely a bit on clichés. In the film, the son seems to be suffering night terrors and this seemed to really go nowhere. Perhaps they were trying to surprise us when the ending came along, but certain facts were not revealed till nearly the end and thus making the son's night terrors just seem to be an almost pointless plot point. I also thought the one occultist should have been in the film more and I wish they would have let him respond to the author's query at the end.
So, overall, I did enjoy the film, just a few too many flaws here and there and a few loose ends that could have used tying up. I do believe that a sequel to this one is being made; however, seeing as how the first on is now a couple of years old at least it is not going to be like Paranormal Activity or The Conjuring. Sure, Annabelle is not a direct sequel, but it is a sort of sequel that uses one aspect of that film that everyone loved and they stretched it to a full length film that took like a week to make. So here is hoping that if they do make another film they explain a bit more, but not too much. That is what happened to Phantasm, they made a film where they explained nothing and then just tried to explain it too much. I also do not wish to see the same film repeatedthey need to do some things differently. So, overall a pretty good horror film, but it contains a couple of the flaws that plague so many horror films that prevent it from being great.