Sinister is proof that you can take a handful of the Same
Old Materials and, with some skilful weaving, produce a good, very creepy horror
movie. With Sinister, you get unsettling 8mm footage of disturbing events, unsolved disappearances
of several children, the horrific deaths of whole families, a mysterious
killer, occult symbols, and a lone protagonist’s descent into the overwhelming
depths of the mystery and the madness. Classic horror-thriller elements. Director Scott
Derrickson, whose Hellraiser: Inferno I enjoyed more than most—I only wished it hadn't been forcibly made a Hellraiser movie—just puts them in the right order so that
they work.
I wonder if the concept of ‘pace’ isn’t overused. Some of
the best recent horror films don’t work by ‘pace.’ They work by rhythm. The
Mothman Prophecies has an eerie rhythm—screw the pace. Sinister, likewise, has
a rhythm. Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a true crime writer who finds the
material for his next book in the eradication of a family save one missing
child. When he moves his family to the very house of the crime, he finds a box
of Super 8 footage in the attic that reveals the staggering extent of the
crime(s) he’s investigating. Each of the crimes consists in the recorded murder
of a whole family, except one child that always goes missing. They are dated
about a decade apart. Oswalt watches a film each night. As unsettling film
ends, a creepy event takes place in the house. This rhythm is repeated over and
over.
The unnaturalness of this pattern can be distancing. You can
predict, by the third time, that something will happen after he watches the
film. Yet, the Super 8 footage is so compellingly disturbing that
the subsequent scares remain effective. The rhythm pulls the viewer, much as
Oswalt, onward into the disorienting horrors of the mystery.
The intrusion of the supernatural into the mystery is where
Sinister begins to lose some of its potency. In a story as eerie and mysterious as Sinister,
the otherworldly must be involved in some sense. But take, again, The Mothman
Prophecies as an example of how the otherworldly can be eerily incorporated
without overexplaining. You can skim the unnatural; you don’t have to
cannonball into it. Derrickson cannonballs. Ghostly ballet and a mythological
explanation for all that’s happened lead to the clever but disappointing climax.
4 comments:
You have definitely sold me, J. I was on the fence, but it certainly gained some momentum when some good word of mouth started after its release in October of last year. I will give it a shot.
I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for dropping by, Mr. Crow.
I think on the last comment I posted, I forgot to type what is in the picture and skipped to the word. ...It's early. I saw Sinister in the theaters because it had Ethan Hawke. I didn't expect anything great, because his strong point these days are indy crime films. The great thing about him, and surely this is his vehicle, is that he can cast a shadow of believability instead of doubt. He sold me on this, but sadly the rest of the family I cared little about for the most part. That switched a little too late in the film for me to care a great deal. The most disturbing element, and I'm sure intentional, was definitely the 8mm films. I loved how he kept watching them, unable to get enough, just like most of us probably would. I won't bash the CGI elements, because while no one really cares for them, traditional elements probably would have turned out just as poor in certain scenes. I gave it a solid 7 and consider it a very worthwhile experience. I hope to some day leave 8mm films in my attic for the new occupants. What is on them can only be determined at a future date.
Yeah, like in 8mm, that Cage film, the 8mm footage and the mystery around them in the beginning is the best and creepiest part.
I found a stash of 8mm films in my grandfather's basement when I was a kid. Unfortunately, they were not creepy home movies. They were all porn. I forget what most of them were, but one in particular stands out in my memories. "The All Day Sucker," "starring John Holmes and The Watergate Girls."
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