After recently watching ‘Insidious’ My partner decided for tonights movie night to check out the other jumpscare ‘hot property’ of the 2010s. ‘Sinister’ a film that, i’d heard some pretty good things about myself over the years, but hadnt really got around to checking out…and, for the most part, I was pretty pleasently surprised!
The plot follows true crime novellist Ellison Oswald, Ellison last had a hit 10 years ago, and after a string of failed releases has chanced one last roll of the dice, moving his family to Pennsylvania to explore the story of a missing child and her murdered family, hoping that he’ll be able to uncover some new information, or better yet; solve the crime, so that he can make it big, and spend the rest of his life financially secure with his family…the only hangup? Ellison didnt tell his family that the house they were moving into was in fact, the house that the murdered family lived in…and that the murder was fairly recently.
The only people who do know what Ellisons done, are the local law enforcement who think its a bit of a sick joke, and tell Ellison up front to watch himself because they dont want any trouble…and the locals who slowly tease information out to Ellisons family, and give them the evil eye on multiple occasions.
But Ellison presses on, setting up his office ready to start working on figuring out exactly what happened. But on taking some boxes up to the attic, he discovers theres already a box up there labelled ‘Home Movies’ on bringing them down, he finds an old 8mm home movie projector and a selection of 8mm films with names like ‘Pool Party’ and ‘Mowing the lawn’…He decides to play one to see whats on the reels, and after a few moments of family home movie type fodder, the film harshley cuts to a brutal act of murder. Ellison slowly begins to realise, that whatever he’s watching here may be tied to the murders he’s looking into, and so he decides to dig deeper into the footage to try and figure out exactly what he’s looking at.
Pairing up with the deputy of the local sheriffs office, he begins to piece together the murders, finding demonic links embedded into the film itself, and a cultish undercurrent that may (or may not) link all the murders to a single killer. But with his family life beginning to spiral as the town begin to open up more about exactly WHAT Ellisons gotten them into. Ellison begins to come under increasing stress and pressure. and when a mysterious presence begins to make itself known in the house, things go from bad to downright horrifying.
Going into this one, I’d heard good things, but I wasnt exactly excited. at an hour and 51 minutes long, I thought this one may have me ‘clock watching’ before too long, and the fact that this is often lumped in with ‘Insidious’ as a bit of a ‘jumpscare’ centric production had me internally groaning a bit, as I figured the long runtime and jumpscare obsession basically translated to a bum numbing experience punctuated by cheap scares.
But theres actually a bit more going on with ‘Sinister’ than I expected. It still didnt quite astound me or anything, but I came away from it actually kind of glad I checked it out. The scripts VERY slow burn, but unlike a lot of films from this era, the slow burn nature in combination with the direction really helped create a slow mounting sense of tension and dread. its an incredibly atmospheric film in places and the plotting, while slow, didnt feel painful to me…I fully believe this film would have been higher rated had it been 90 minutes rather than 112, but whats here, for the most part, is pretty good!
The tone is a wonderful malevolence all the way through, steeping the audience in claustrophobic and analogue horror scenery, that I really found quite engaging. The characters are all pretty nicely multi layered (something that I think is missing from a lot of films from this era) its as much a psycho-thriller about an author slowly losing his mind to the stresses of potential failure, as it is a straight paranormal horror film. and the mixture of psychological horror, paranormal horror, thriller elements and the aforementioned jumpscares, actually mixes together into a rather solid work all things considered.
The act structuring is pretty solid, establishing all the tools the audience needs in the first act to crack on, it revs up in the second act, leading to a 3rd act thats maybe a little too high on tension/low on scares. But (and this is the crucial thing) for me, it ended actually pretty solidly. So many films from the late 2000s and early 2010s could do temporary horror or tension and then bomb on the landing…So this one just about managing to hold it together and deliver something (mostly) satisfying? I think is a really good job.
Direction wise. Im going to keep it simple here, its a studio picture, so it already meets the absolute base standards needed to be an acceptable viewing experience. My problem with this is that the directional style falls into two silos. Its a 33% mesh of shots that look very aesthetically pleasing, are well coloured and…while maybe not the most adventurous direction in the world, is still enagaging and pretty well handled…to 66% DEEPLY underlit to almost pitch black footage. Seriously, I dont know how anyone could watch the DVD version of this film, as for the vast majority of it you’ll either be watching a black screen, or at most about 20% of the screen will be dimly lit with the cast feintly framed…We watched a HD copy and even then we were struggling with the murkey darkness. I think a 4k copy may ACTUALLY be the only way to SEE this damn movie.
On the cine front, Again, its good! shots are fairly well compsed (when you can see whats going on) they dont shy away from experimentation with composition and scene layout, as I mention, they arnt exactly pushing any boundaries here. But it was a comfy watch to just sit and get immersed into. Lighting was a bit of an issue, and Im still not a champion of that terrible mid 2000’s onwards trend of desaturating the whole film to give it a washed out ‘murky water’ colour grade. I like my horror vibrant and visually pleasing!
Sequences are well cut together, theres some nice effects work that I think is handled really well, the edit is razor tight. Im honestly surprised this film doesnt get held up more often from that perspective, as there were genuinely some fun horror moments through this film, that I feel get a bit overlooked honestly.
Performance wise, Ethan Hawke gives a great turn as Ellison, he comes across as genuine, sincere and for the most part I thought he played it quite naturalistically…Though I do think he struggled a bit with more anger driven moments. he went big during those scenes, when I think a quieter approach may have served him better. But otherwise? I thought he was a solid lead.
The rest of the supporting cast are all pretty solid as well…No notes really, I just kind of sort of enjoyed hanging around with the people in this story, I dont think any of them performed particualrly badly, and on the whole I think the cast got the assignment and nailed more or less all of it.
And the soundtrack? A little unremarkable if im honest, its the era of drone and sampling older corny tunes, twisting them into horror pieces. What I really liked about Sinister is the fact they utilise silence so well, its rare to see a mainstream film do it so often, but here. They really do use silence and drone well to help keep things feeling extra spooky!
All in all, I liked Sinister. But thats not to say it doesnt have its problems. its a long LONG movie that I feel DESPERATELY needed a shorter cut to fully win me over, throw in a couple of plot beats that I felt didnt quite play true to how real people would behave and the questionable lighting choices, and you have a film that I think i’d absolutely watch again…But maybe not with my full attention. I’d say its definitely worth checking out at least once. But temper your expectations, and I think you’ll enjoy it more for it.
All I can say is, its got me curious to check out the sequel…So it must have done something right!
TYTD Reviews 