Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a True Crime writer who dabbles in detective work. It’s been several years since his bestseller, Kentucky Blood, hit the shelves. Desperate for another hit, Oswalt moves with his family into a house that was the scene of several horrific murders in the 1960s. Settling in to write his book, Oswalt is shocked to find a box of snuff films in the attic, and it isn’t long before his mental state becomes frayed.
Sinister splits the difference between a traditional haunted-house thriller and the psychological ambiguity of The Shining. Like The Shining and the recent TV adaptation of another Stephen King novel, Bag of Bones, Sinister puts a lot of pressure on its lead actor, with the majority of the scenes here featuring Hawke alone. At 42, and with his impossible-to-shake boyishness, Hawke doesn’t quite suit the haunted has-been persona of his character. But he carries the film well enough, and certainly does a decent job considering how much screen time he has.
Perverse as it is to say, the film’s murder scenes are its best feature. Grotesquely imaginative, and shown on slow-motion Super-8 film, they are genuinely disturbing, and definitely contribute something distinctive to the crowded world of low-budget horror. The sound design contributes no end to the film’s atmosphere the use of grainy, bubbling ambient music, including the repeated use of a Boards of Canada track, is impeccably judged.
In the end, the serial-killer-cult theme is sinister enough on its own, so that the supernatural elements (including apparitions of children wearing zombie face paint, which I personally don’t find especially frightening) feel superfluous. But this is a minor quibble: overall the film achieves its modest aims with surprising effectiveness all the more surprising considering that Scott Derrickson’s last film was the sci-fi misfire The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)!
The disc’s commentaries are a little heavy-going, but provide reams of trivia (about the naming of characters, for example, and other writerly decisions) that should keep horror buffs entertained.
Overall Verdict: A minor but surprisingly solid shocker.
Special Features:
Director’s Commentary
Commentary with writers Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill
True Crime Authors feature
Living in a House of Death feature
Fear Experiment
Trailer
Reviewer: Tom René