Sinister (2012)

Credit: Summit Entertainment

I’ve watched plenty of television shows and movies with serial killers, from The X-Files and Millennium to Silence of the Lambs and Zodiac. The genre has plenty of interesting stories that have been told, but Sinister is without doubt a very unique spin on it, which even uses the popular “found footage” trend that’s been going around. The plot is that Ethan Hawke, a non-fiction crime novelist, moves into a house where a family was murdered and then discovers the home movies of the killer; pretty disturbing stuff.

Sinister is a very dark movie, both figuratively and literally. Each “Super 8” reel is a different film of each murder and it doesn’t shy away from the grisly violence. Families are hung, burned alive, and drowned, which isn’t even the worst. It’s also a dark movie literally, because the house is always dark. It seriously seems like when the family moved into this new house, they forgot to screw in new light bulbs. Though that means the movie would be without the typical “jump scares” that plague the genre, in which an idiot character walks into a darkened room and a creepy face pops up beside (or behind) them. As much as I enjoyed the plot of Sinister, it still had that tendency of falling on the trappings of the horror genre.

For being so dark, it actually has some nice moments of humor, which are from the character of a deputy. I’m not aware of whom this actor is, but I genuinely liked his character and his scenes with Ethan Hawke, who calls him “Deputy So and So”; it even says so in his phone. I thought Vincent D’Onofrio would have been used more, given that he was featured in all of the movie’s trailers and commercials. His purpose seemed to be that he would give information to Ethan Hawke at key moments and then he was never heard from again. While the movie isn’t without faults, I honestly enjoyed Sinister. All you can hope for in a horror movie is that the acting is average, which Sinister has, but its also genuinely terrifying. Hollywood needs more horror like this.