Satisfying suburban horror fantasy

Rating: 7/10 (2 March 2013)

Although hardly a future classic, SINISTER is nevertheless among the more satisfying and sure-footed horror fantasies in the past couple of years--the equivalent of a solidly hit two-base grounder--and a major professional improvement for writer/director Scott Derrickson.
Combining effects and motifs from Western and J-horror, Derrickson's script deftly turns the screws from natural mystery to supernatural as Ethan Hawke's true-crime author Ellison Oswalt delves into a cold case, only to uncover pattern killings which prove ultimately mythic. The "suburban nightmare" structure is strictly conventional, but contains enough twists to keep from collapsing on itself. There are a few too many red herrings, but not an egregious number.
The characters aren't terribly intelligent, but they're not incapable of doing sensible things...at least, within the set-up's context. One problem with the script is that the dysfunctional marriage portrayed couldn't have lasted long enough to produce even one child (whenever Oswalt goes to another small town, researching some notorious local crime, Juliet Rylance's wife Tracy: a) insists that the whole family move with him; b) but demands that he never discuss even the topic of his work; c) then reliably freaks out to learn that the old case had been big news among the chatty new neighbors). Clearly, if she didn't require so much nuclear togetherness, his career wouldn't be an issue; indeed, the characters' whole dynamic should have been better constructed. Still, Derrickson deserves credit for creating characters with enough weight to warrant even that level of critique.