"Sinister" is yet another horror flick that is well made but, is just too familiar to really be effective. The story opens as a true crime author (Ethan Hawke) moves his family into a house where a multiple homicide was committed (always a bad move) that is the subject of his new novel. But, a box of old home movies mysteriously shows up containing footage of numerous murders and before you can say "The Ring" a pagan boogie man know as Buhguul is haunting the footage and his life. Scott Derrickson does create some nice atmosphere and there are some genuinely spooky scenes and well executed jump scares but, he and C. Robert Cargill's script is far too reminiscent of films like "The Ring" and "The Grudge" to establish it's own identity and really scare us. You pretty much know what is coming and it's no shock when the film finally gets there. As usual, Hawke's Ellison makes all the right stupid decisions to set the story in motion and continues to do so to keep it headed toward it's predicable conclusion. And I can forgive stupidity in a horror flick if at least it delivers the goods and "Sinister" only does really gives us some good chills in the last third but, then arrives at a routine conclusion for this kind of flick that we see coming a mile away. It also doesn't help that so little is known about this Buhguul entity that we never really get a good grasp of it's character and therefor don't really get a good sense of menace. He's just another generic boogie man hiding in pictures and movie footage like the long haired girl ghosts of Asian horror, but, without the personality. The cast all perform well. Hawke is good despite the familiarity of the material and Juliet Rylance does her job as the wife concerned over her husbands behavior, although James Ransone's deputy is one stop away from Deputy Dewey from "Scream" . The film does have a slow burn and ultimately could have used a few minutes taken out to move things a long better as there is some repetition with some of the scenes' events (the projector starting on it's own). And the film might have been a bit more effective had the spooky scenes come closer together. All in all SInister is worth a rental, it's not bad, just far too much of what we have seen far too many times before to make it anything more then a forgettable diversion.
Review of Sinister
