By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on Movies: Sinister
SINISTER (Two and a Half Stars)
U.S.: Scott Derrickson, 2012
Sometimes genuinely scary, sometimes genuinely silly, Scott Derrickson’s Sinister actually has one of the more frightening uses of horror movie found footage they’ve sprung on us recently. How much you enjoy it depends on how much disbelief you can suspend and how much footage you can swallow — which may depend on how many contemporary horror movies, especially the Blair Witch and Paranormal knockoffs, are on your regular diet.
Derrickson the supposedly amateur films more effective this time, by mixing them up with supposedly “real life” stuff of what’s going on outside the found footage, with the guy supposedly watching these creepy horror home movies. In what passes in Sinister for the real world, a struggling true-crime author named Ellison (Ethan Hawke) moves his family into a house where another family not so long ago was massacred , without informing his own loved ones of their new home’s gruesome history or of the other murders (in other places) that preceded it.
The rest of the family — Juliet Rylance as mom Tracy, and Claire Foley and Michael Hall Daddario as kids Ashley and Trevor — begin to show signs of paranormal wear and tear. The spooks play hide-and-seek and jump-behind-a-door and we-wish we-were-in-The-Shining behind Ellison as he wanders around the place, and, as the dour local sheriff, Fred Dalton Thompson (perhaps contemplating another presidential bid), shows up and acts surly. Thompson’s deputy though, played by James Sansone, is contrastingly helpful to the author, since he’s eager to get an acknowledgement in the eventual book‘s front section.
Meanwhile, Ellison keeps his most horrific discovery to himself : In the attic are scruffy old boxes containing amateur movies of the actual murders, taken, it seems, by the actual killer or killers. They are, by far, the movie’s most disturbing moments.
These home snuff movies are creepy and ragged-looking. The real-life scenes are creepy stylized horror stuff. And the professional reality makes the amateur “reality” movies look spookier. (Kudos to cinematographer Chris Norr for the way he lights both of them; the movie looks fantastic.) Derrickson, who also directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the overblown 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, works with Norr to keep everything shadowy and grim and unsettling — never more so than when we witness those murders, especially the one in the tree.
Despite an effective fall-apart acting job by Hawke though, you have to swallow a little too much malarkey to completely enjoy this movie. Like all the loud noises nobody seems to hear. Or the way the family seems to except so much madness. Or the absence of everyday townspeople. Sheriff Thomson probably has the right idea.. Get out of town — or stay out of the attic — or don’t climb trees — or leave that found footage in its box, dammit.
