Horrorfest 2016: Sinister

How about some slick Hollywood horror? 2012's SINSTER, directed by Scott Derrickson, stars my boy Ethan Hawke as an alcoholic true crime author who moves his family into the scene of a crime. It seems their new home's previous family were all hanged from a tree in the backyard, and the only surviving member, one of their kids, went missing. Of course, Hawke doesn't tell his wife (Juliet Rylance) or kids (Clare Foley and Michael Hall D'Addario) this.

Shortly after moving in, Hawke discovers 8mm films, and a projector, and watches them. Turns out they're all footage of various families' deaths. This is the most effective stuff in the movie, and in fact, the movie starts with the footage of the family hanging. There's something inherently creepy about the projector, the films, the image quality, the silence, etc.

Unfortunately that's about all this movie has going for it. It turns into a ghost story where you begin to wonder if the ghosts know they're in a movie. There are long scenes of Hawke investigating his house when he hears a bump in the night, and ghosts pop up behind him, so that we can see them, and then duck into doorways or around corners before he can turn around and spot them. It's as if they're popping up just to say hi to the audience. From Hawke's point of view, he's just walking around a dark house.

This is one of those movies where weird shit edited at increasingly loud and frequent intervals stands in for actual frights and scares. You can tell it's supposed to be scary because stuff gets louder and louder and cuts get quicker and quicker the closer you get to the end of the movie.

Vincent D'Onofrio is in it, so that's nice.