Lawn Work With Mr. Boogie

Rating: 8/10 (8 November 2012)

To appreciate a good horror film, you must watch a lot of bad ones. While the same is true of movies as a medium, it is particularly true of horror movies which can quickly become, at best unfrightening and predictable, and at worst parody or even comedy. I have watched a lot of horror films, and Sinister is as solid, frightening, disturbing and unsettling as the best the genre has to offer. Crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Hawke) scored a major hit a decade ago with his real life crime novel "Kentucky Blood". Unfortunately since that one best seller, more recent novels have not sold as well, and he has become a driven man searching for another best seller. He relocates his family, (wife Tracey and son and daughter Trevor and Ashley) to a small town in Pennsylvania to research and write his new novel, which he naturally hopes will revive his reputation and bank balance. He neglects to tell his family that he has actually moved them into the very property where the grisly murders he is researching took place. No sooner has Ellison and his family moved into the house, than the tension starts to build. We learn that Ellison is researching a murder where all of the family were murdered, and the youngest child abducted. Ellison finds a portable movie projector and some rolls of super 8 film in the attic, and the footage shows not only the murder he is currently researching in graphic detail, but a series of other grisly murders that stretch through a number of different states on both the west and east coasts dating back to the 1960's. He is both horrified and exhilarated by what he has found, as it suggests the pattern of a single minded and hitherto unnoticed serial killer, whose has been active since the 60's and who is clearly still active. His book could explode onto the best seller lists with this material, and he knows it. The pattern is always the same with the murder of all family members in truly horrific ways, with the exception the youngest child who is taken and never found. What Ellison establishes to ratchet up the tension very early on in the movie is that the killer must have returned to the house he and his family now occupy after the murders but before their arrival, and placed the box in the attic for the next incumbent to find. We know this because when the Police combed the house after the murders, the attic was photographed, and it was totally empty. As if the thought of a successful and elusive serial killer having the mindset to return to the scene of a crime and leave live footage of his murderous exploits is not enough unsettle even the most hardened of horror film goers, the film then takes a clever, but not totally unexpected turn into the possibility of something else, an entity or presence at the house, which unsettles both Ellison and the audience, as he reacts to unexplained noises,an infestation of scorpions and snakes, and a haunted film projector which insists on switching itself on, to replay the murder footage over and over again, and always at night. Aside from the "things that go bump in the night" approach, the tension steps up a notch again when Ellison downloads the Super 8 film from the original movie reels onto his laptop computer. Repeated viewings of these graphic and unsettling home movies, clearly shot by the killer in grainy and wobbly hand held images, start to reveal two things to Ellison, a drawn symbol that repeats itself at all of the murder scenes and even more disturbingly, a hidden and masked character that appears to be looking on as the murders take place. To say any more about the plot development would spoil what is a genuinely frightening movie. There are some jump out of your seat moments, and the movie works so well because the further Ellison's investigations and research take him, the more he realises he is into something that may in fact consume both him and his family, and if it were possible, is undoubtedly far worse. I think this one will spawn a Sinister II, as when the eventual puppet master is revealed, it is clear that apprehension by any law enforcement agency is unlikely. The brilliant Vincent D'Onofrio has a supporting role, and even though we only see him on a computer screen, he is always a pleasure to watch and adds some gravitas to the film. Hawke is also good as the determined author looking for a last shot. Suspenseful, eerie and disturbing, this one will be scaring people for some time to come. So infrequently does a good horror film come along, if you like scares, you must watch this one; it won't leave you wanting and just might make you think what's looking out at you from your laptop screen.