So you buy a new house in a new neighborhood in a new town in a new state, and in the attic there’s a box of hand-shot super-8 film reels of grizzly murders. What’s your next move? “Hey, honey, let’s not meet the neighbors just yet.” Of course, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) has sought this very house for exactly this reason – it is the site of an ugly unsolved multiple homicide. Ellison is a non-fiction crime writer, you see, and he’s come to research a new book. His reputation as a cop ball-buster precedes him and is thus given a very unfriendly welcome by the local Sheriff (Fred Dalton Thompson, suspiciously absent from politics of late). This dynamic works well because it makes both Ellison and the police reluctant to seek out one another.
Ellison expects an attic devoid of all and is surprised to find the box sitting there. It contains a projector and innocently labeled canisters (e.g. “Pool party”). He’s curious. Wouldn’t you be? When he reels up the first, he finds four people tied to nooses hanging from a tree. A tree in his new back yard. That would 
freak me out. This immediately raised two question in my head: who put the box in the attic? Who shot the films? Within the very next minute, Ellison writes down both questions. Ah, Sinister, you and me are gonna get along juuuuuuuust fine.
One of the subplots here is that Ellison is a has-been, still milking fame from his masterpiece of a decade previous. His wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance) doesn’t know they’ve moved into a murder house. Oh, you crazy kids are gonna have a lot to talk about, ain’t ya? And their son suffers from night terrors the way Oswald Alving suffered from headaches. Sorry, but how often are you gonna work an Ibsen reference into a movie review, anyway? When a rustling moving box turns out to be insomniacal-son in the form of an animated corpse, Ellison is sufficiently creeped out. And so are we. Hmmmm, our son doesn’t usually sleepshimmy out of an empty cardboard box like Jame Gumb. Is it time to tell the wife? Nah. Even the “normal” stuff in Sinister kinda gives you the willies.
Older and thinner now, Ethan Hawke is starting to resemble Kevin Bacon. A lot. The facial hair Ethan wears in the film doesn’t help – jaw is my best way of distinguishing the two these days. The movie was scary, yes. But perhaps this truth is even more Sinister.
No, it’s the movie. Did you see that laptop moment? Seriously creepy.
A writer of tales most gory
Discovers some super 8 horror-y
The more that he views
The closer the clues
Uh oh, he’s now part of the story
Rated R, 110 Minutes
D: Scott Derrickson
W: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Genre: Guess what you’ve stepped in?
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The disappointed-with-Paranormal-Activity throng
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Real estate agents
