Sinister
Tags: tragedy, violence, horror, murder

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Super 8 footage depicting a family of four standing beneath a tree with sacks over their heads and nooses around their necks. An unseen figure pulls at a rope attached to a partially sawed-through branch of the tree, causing their deaths by hanging.
True crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Hawke) moves into a home with his wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance) and their two children: 7-year-old Ashley (Clare Foley), an artist who is allowed to paint on her walls and 12-year-old Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario), who suffers from night terrors. The local sheriff pays a visit, indicating his dislike of Ellison and his career; his books have often criticized law enforcement for mistakes. Ellison has moved his family (unbeknownst to them) into a home where a family was murdered, all hung by ropes on a tree in the backyard. Ellison intends to use the case of the murdered family as the basis for his new book and hopes that his research will reveal the fate of the Stevenson family's fifth member, a 10-year-old girl named Stephanie who disappeared following the murders. Later that night Ellison discovers Trevor in a box, naked and screaming, having experienced another night terror.
Ellison finds a box in the attic that contains a projector and several reels of Super 8 mm footage that are each labeled as innocent home movies. Ellison discovers that the films are actually murder footage depicting different families being murdered in various ways by an unseen person holding the camera. Ellison notes the appearance of a mysterious symbol in the films as well as a strange masked figure. Consulting a local deputy (James Ransone), Ellison discovers that the murders took place at different times, beginning in the 1960s and in different cities across the country. He also learns that a child from each family went missing following every murder. The deputy refers Ellison to Professor Jonas (Vincent D'Onofrio), whose expertise is the occult, to decipher the symbol in the films. Jonas tells Ellison that such symbols are that of a Pagan Babylonia deity named Bughuul (Nick King), who would kill entire families and then take one of their children in order to consume his/her soul, leaving the symbol behind.
One night, Ellison hears the film projector running and finds the missing children seated in the attic watching one of the films. Bughuul suddenly appears on camera before physically appearing before Ellison, causing him to fall off the ladder. Ellison takes the camera, projector and the films outside and burns them with petrol. His wife meets him outside and he tells her that they're moving back to their old house immediately.
At his old home, Ellison receives a video-message from Jonas, who sends him scans of historical images associated with Bughuul, including the symbol seen in the murder movies; the images have been partially destroyed by the early Christians, who believed that images of Bughuul served as a gateway for the demon to come from the spiritual realm to the mortal world; children who saw the images of Bughuul could be possessed and even abducted into the images.
Ellison discovers the projector and films (from the previous house) in his attic, along with an envelope of film labeled "extended cut endings". The deputy calls and informs him that every murdered family had previously lived in the house where the last murder took place and each new murder occurred shortly after the family moved from the crime scene into their new residence. By moving, Ellison has placed himself and his family in line to be the next victims.
The extra footage depicts the missing children coming onscreen following each murder, revealing themselves to be the killers, before suddenly disappearing. Ellison becomes light-headed, and notices a bright green liquid mixed with his coffee in the cup, along with a note reading "Good Night, Daddy" under the cup before losing consciousness. Ashley appears behind Ellison, revealing herself to be the drugger, under Bughuul's possession. Ellison awakens to find himself, Tracy and Trevor bound and gagged on the floor of the parlour next to the lit fire. Ashley approaches filming him with the 8 mm camera. Ashley then decapitates Ellison with an axe before killing Tracy and Trevor off screen, using their blood to paint images of cats, dogs and unicorns on the walls. Ashley then views the film of her murders while drawing the murder in the lid of the home movies box. The missing children stare at her through the camera, but flee when Bughuul appears. He lifts Ashley into his arms and disappears into the film with her.
The film concludes with an image of the box of films in the Oswalt family's attic, now accompanied by Ashley's reel, labeled "House Painting '12".

Review: The movie debuted in this same town's SXSW Film Festival in March.Ethan Hawke is Ellison Oswalt, a true crime author and devoted family man with a what-have-you-done-for-us-lately fan base and editor anxiously awaiting his next blockbuster.
As the film opens, the Oswalts are moving into yet another new house, but Ellison swears this is the last time, and selectively informs his family of his intentions.In the process of unpacking, Ellison discovers a box of the previous owner's old home movies in the attic.
The imagery is great and so are your jumpy moments even if it does contain a few of the horror Clichés.The plot is simple and follows true-crime writer Ellison (Ethan Hawke) as he discovers a box of home movies "found footage" of murders that put his family in danger.
The ending is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in a horror film and I've seen many!"Sinister" is a ghost story of Japanese proportions.
I was dying to see "Sinister." It looked like one off those great psychological horror films that isn't so much interested in blood and guts as it is freaking you out, and that's just what it is.
Hawke makes for an interesting main character and even the creepy house and creepy killer off the movie are expanded to be something way more."Sinister" is bloody terrifying.
The scares stick with you and you will go back to being just as tense as you were before the scare.Another way 'Sinister' differs from most modern horror movies is that it actually focuses on plot.
The film's director Scott Derrickson spends just as much time focusing on plot development as he does on scaring us, much like he did with 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose'.
However Sinister manages to find ways to break free of these leashes that the horror genre is becoming tied down to.Ethan Hawk stars as a true crime writer known as Ellison who moves into a new home with his wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance) and his two children, Ashley (Clare Foley) and Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario) near the site of a local crime in order to get inspiration for his novel.
It gave me goosebumps just thinking about it.One thing that I feel about SINISTER was that Derrickson (together with Young) brought us back to that atmospheric terror of the unknown that is truly nostalgic of horror films of the 70s.The feel of the movie was so scary that this was how THE AMITYVILLE HORROR should have been remade.In short, I'd highly recommend you (or better still DARE YOU) to see SINISTER.
I say an Oscar is deserved for Christopher Young who has outdone himself with sublime arrangements which bring depth and real terror alongside the visuals.By instilling fear from the outset and implying a dreadful fate to the protagonist (which the viewer is hoping can be avoided but ultimately knows is lurking at the end), Sinister takes its influence from The Ring and keeps the tension building throughout the movie.
I am a horror fan and it was a great scary movie and disturbing, good disturbing if you know what I mean.
Because there's not many movies that freaked me out that way and all of the people in the theater were scared as hell like me, and it was a good feeling overall.
With that beginning, the 1st minute you know it's gonna be hard sometimes to watch and i love how obsessed the character of Ethan Hawke is and who really looks like a writer and reminds me sometimes of Johnny Depp in Secret Window.
The movie is very thrilling and breathe taking horror.I was scared while watching.Especially the short clips were very thrilling,terrific and dangerous.The direction was good.The screenplay and editing was nice.The story is brilliant.The acting were superb from all the characters.The ending scene was really really very scary.And the main things were the clips that were terrific.The bogeyman was very horror and dangerous.I think that horror movies fans will never get disappoint while watching this movie.They will definitely like this.A must watch for horror movies lovers.I think this is the finest horror film I have watched till date.
And yet, I feel it rises above many other films because of one thing- expert building and payoff of atmosphere.We follow the story of true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), who moves his family into a new house...
While I have taken issue with some of director Derrickson's films in the past (including the woefully misjudged "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake), I've very much admired his work in the field of horror, in addition to his recent return to the mainstream with the delightful "Doctor Strange." And despite a limited budget, he shines through with wicked visual direction and a wonderfully disturbing sense of dread in "Sinister." This is one eerie, unsettling film, and his keen use of darkness, composition and suggestive camera angles lends a lot of fear to the proceedings.
Also the ending isn't what I expected at all and I feel there could have been more action but it did fit in with the rest of this movie which can be quite slow at times, but you hardly notice because of the way this film draws you into it's world.
From start to finish it was the most unimaginative, badly directed, uninspired trash have seen in a long time.It's like someone has taken pieces from a 'make your own horror movie' kit and pasted them together until they all seemed to fit together and then presented the finished result as an original piece of work.
Finding a box of film reels and a projector in the attic, Ellison sifts through the footage and begins to uncover a shocking history of gruesome violence.Ellison is an interesting character due to his flawed nature and instances of unlikeability, which then ultimately blend well with the scenes depicting him as a good man at heart and a caring father.
Ellison's dual nature also gives the typical "nagging wife" archetype a justifiable reason to bitch and Rylance's Tracey does so in a way that makes us root for her, for him, both or them and them as a collective family.When it comes to idiocy in horror films, Sinister as does an admirable job of avoiding, if not masking, the tendency.
A true crime writer picks the wrong murder mystery for his next book in "Sinister," a horror movie that balances the contemporary horror movie formula with mystery thriller elements and a solid leading performance.Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a successful writer who has just moved his family to a town in Pennsylvania where a family was found hung from a tree in the backyard except for the third child, who was reported missing.
Ellison realizes he's on to something big, but eventually things take a supernatural turn.If the film weren't titled "Sinister" (a title that seems to have been subjectively chosen for marketing purposes) and you went in without knowing anything, you might actually convince yourself you were watching an eerie true crime thriller and be a bit surprised to watch the film take a contemporary horror flick turn equipped with creepy ghost children, freaky old movies and a pagan deity.
Director Scott Derrickson ("The Exorcism of Emily Rose") uses classic suspense techniques and the creepy Super8 videos for that slow-building dread effect reminiscent of a more classic horror-thriller, while also employing the slow- walking-through-a-house-at-night-that-ends-in-a-jump-scare techniques of today's horror movies.
Hawke allows us to empathize with his character despite knowing full well that we would not have handled things the same way he does at various points in the film.The ending has some issues along those lines and some information that seems obvious to the audience is not obvious to the characters, and that can be frustrating, but on the whole, "Sinister" leaves you with a jaw-dropper of an ending, a perfectly freaky culmination of all the classic suspense and minutes upon minutes of wondering when it's all going to blow up."Sinister" will more likely win over viewers who don't always like scary movies than it will avid scary movie watchers who love the genre precisely for its conventions and clichés, but it successfully reaches out to both.
It tells the story about a crime writer who moves into a house with his wife and two children and one day when he goes up to attic he finds a box full of videos when he watches them,the movies are of family's dying.
Bagul exists in images of himself and runs the risk of making Ellison's family the latest casualty of the house.Director Scott Derrickson cleverly used a variety of different camera angles on several key occasions in the film to express the fear and shock of the victims, and the use of sound to depict this was done in a horrifying way.
Its scary as hell, right from the start of the movie the hair on your arms will stand up, because the footage that are going to see in this film, really lives up the name of the movie "sinister" it has the feel like the old horror films, when the suspense comes creeping and ends up so intense, go see this with your girlfriend, or a girl you like, i grantee you that she will be hiding her eyes into your shirt.
If a horror movie can make you feel appropriately uncomfortable, then it's done its job.The cast is actually small, and it is led by A-list performer Ethan Hawke as Ellison.
James Ransone also stars as a town deputy, providing some great humor to help the audience breathe before the big "BOO!" And Vincent D'Onofrio goes uncredited as a professor who provides Ellison with a hefty amount of information about the events behind these home movies.The jump scares of "Sinister" are perfectly executed, and there are no cats waiting to falsely freak you out.
Am writing this Review as a fan of Horror flicks.Most of the horror movie will be emphasized with the Sound effects, blood splitting scenes and with CG and they will be weak in the story line but sinister is an exceptional from other horror movies.Solid story line which carry's the whole movie without any blur, and appropriate sound effects which scares the hell out the viewers.The reasons why the movie is good are: i) Ethan's performance adds additional strength to the plot and is acting was perfectly matched.
Sinister has the former: inventiveness, which is increasingly difficult to create in a genre as enormous as horror.The invention with Sinister is not the combination of fairly standard elements - horrible crimes, the occult, ancient ritual, children as mysterious victims, 'haunted' house, an investigating character - but it's how they are woven into the story and how the story unravels.Best of all, Ethan Hawke lends his talents as a facial actor to a film in which his character, Ellison the writer of real crime, is not only central to the story but part of it - unknowingly.
The acting was also good, though mainly by the rest of the cast (for instance Michael Hall D'Addario and Clare Foley as the two children, or Fred Dalton Thompson and James Ransone as the Sheriff and Deputy), I don't really appreciate Ethan Hawk's obvious overacting in this one (though I guess his acting is like pineapple as a pizza topping, you either like it or you don't).As for the ending, I always enjoy Horror more when a clever plot twist is applied, enhancing the feeling of suspense and the using the element of surprise to increase the overall sensation of fear (very much like psycho-thriller films).
In Sinister, the ending doesn't involve such a twist per se, but it definitely binds together many pieces of information and succeeds in being unpredictable and horrifying (even when watching for the 2nd time!)One of the best features of this film is the original soundtrack, which is dark and eerie and definitely takes the overall feeling of discomfort to a new level.
I never saw myself so in-tuned , captivated, disgusted, and riveted by a news story in all my life.Thankfully, I never experience an obsession with a case or past events like the one our lead character Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) in Sinister immerses himself into.
It abandons much of the "jump-scare" cliché, and uses it cautiously and with great effect, it focuses on characters, disciplined and rational, it shows Ellison's descent into obsession effectively and realistically, relies on setting, sound, and tone to invoke fear in its audience, and pulls out an engaging story to tie everything back together.The film's best scene comes shortly after the hour mark and involves Ellison and Tracy angrily spitting words with venom and hate back and forth, Ellison saying how his book, while potentially sacrificing his family's safety, will buoy them financially, and Tracy saying how he has become such an unrecognizable man being buried and eaten alive by his work.
"Sinister" is a dark and spooky horror movie with a creepy ghost story.
I mention this because if Saw or Hostel are your bag then maybe this one won't suit, but if you like a good thriller with added chills then you're at the right movie.Established but hasn't had a hit for a while author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is moving his family to a new home to research a true crime case that he hopes will get him back on the best sellers list.
There are a few jump out of your seat moments and also more subtle, uncomfortable viewings of the super 8 footage that put a horrendous spin on the found footage narrative where you can't help but watch for clues with Ellison as they sear off the screen.In a perfect world the build up to the film could have been a little more secretive ideally, as trailer footage can unfortunately give the audience major deja vu when a couple of scenes are building to a big scare you'll have seen it already but there are plenty more where they came from.All in all an effective and tense thriller that will have some of you sleeping with the lights on for a couple of nights and a new found fear of attic space!More reviews at wherewolftherewolf.com.
I was hooked from the first scene till the last good watch I give it a high 7 not a lot of gore maybe 2 deaths had good brute to them I don't like Ethan Hawke but I liked him in this he didn't over act like he seems to do and when he needed to angry or scared he did a good job I hope he does more of this type of movie or maybe science fiction.It has a artsy kinda fairy tale feel once you put the whole story together it was not predictable.
After moving himself and his family into a new house that was the scene of a horrendous crime, true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) finds a box of 8mm "snuff" films that suggest the murder he is currently researching is the work of a serial killer whose career dates some way back still further...It is becoming the un-reviewable genre, horror that is, there are just too many splinters of horror to choose from and so many people to cater for.
I love this sub-genre of horror, and I feel Sinister is one of the best films of its type in recent years.
Even a hardened horror film fan like myself, I am having second thoughts about seeing this movie again.
The trailer looked interesting and the story sounded alright, but the movie itself was just far from scary and actually turned out to be somewhat of a joke.Sure it was better than the recent crap that has flooded the horror genre, such as the "Paranormal Activity" series, but then again, it doesn't take much from a movie to do that.What made "Sinister" bearable to watch was the acting performances.
A lot of good camera work and great angles, but ultimately it was all struggling to best a horrible storyline and a lack of scares.The story does start out nice and does have a certain appeal, but it all takes a turn for the worse when you are let in on what is actually going on, and when you see the dead children in the house for the first time it all goes downhill fast.I had expected "Sinister" to be a lot more than it turned out to be.
"Sinister," is a great old school, supernatural horror movie, and is a great example of how, if you are going to do it, to correctly make a movie involving the overused fad of "Found Footage." It's the story of a true crime writer,Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) that moves his family into a house formerly owned by a murdered family whose daughter is still missing.
In many ways it is much in the style of the old classic, "The Shining," mixed with the more new school of films such as "The Ring." There is no corny element to it which too many movies put in today, and it makes it a delight, at least for me, to watch.Ethan Hawke was excellent as the crime writer and father who is seeking that next big book, yet feeling himself slip away from his idealistic views of why he chose that genre in the first place are fading.
However, I must make an exception to "Sinister." I had heard very good things about this film making it a must-see for a horror movie fan like me.
OK, there are horror clichés here like the house in seemingly perpetual darkness, or the sudden scares that lead nowhere, creepy children drawing on walls, and so on, but in this movie, these things actually work well to work up the audience's heart rates and goosebumps.
I highly recommend horror film fans to watch "Sinister." It is as it is entitled..