31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 2 - Sinister
Sinister
110 minutes
Dir. Scott Derrickson
USA/2012
One of the movies that came out awhile back that I never got a chance to see when it was released and then just kept getting pushed back further and further on the list. So tonight let's see what is so sinister about Sinister
Open-mouthed always worried looking Ethan Hawke is a true-crime writer who moves his family into the house whose previous residents were murdered and daughter went missing. Ethan is chasing his next big writing break and thinks if he can break this case he will be on easy street. Ethan's wife doesn't want to know what he writes about or what happened in the house. His daughter paints on the walls (you see where this is going) and his son has night terrors, which really amount to nothing with the story other then trying to be a red herring and give you fake scares.
While Ethan is putting a box away in storage upstairs in a barren attic, he finds a box out in the open filled with 8mm reels and a projector. His inquisitive detective mind of course sets up the projector in his office and begins to discover what is on each reel, which first shows families having fun together and shows them tied, gagged and murdered further on in the filming. Morbidly enough this is probably the most effective part of the film, as all these murder scenes were shot on actual super 8mm and look authentic enough. Very grisly and disturbing subject matter.
Ethan transfers the super 8 to digital and studies each scene discovering some reoccurring themes, some mystical symbol present at each murder scene and a member of Slipknot standing and watching in the background. Ok maybe not really, but someone wearing a mask that looks like he could play in Slipknot shows up as each murder takes place. As Ethan is putting pieces of the murders together he starts hearing noises in his house and goes to investigate. But what was not explained in the film that I had to figure out for myself is Ethan has built in night vision and can see in the dark, because HE DOESN'T TURN ON ANY GOD DAMN LIGHTS AS HE SEARCHES HIS HOUSE AT NIGHT! Ok maybe he doesn't have night vision, maybe the house just has no light bulbs in it. Seriously my wife doesn't shut any lights off and Ethan can't be bothered to turn any on especially when he is looking for something or someone. I am sorry but this type of thing bugs the shit out of me and can be a movie's downfall. This time it does not though, there are plenty other things going on here that do that.
Anyway where were we, oh yeah looking around in a dark house for noises. Usually those noises turn out to be his hippy son sleep walking or something from having night terrors. But sometimes those noises are the projector turning on itself or sometimes the noises are made by the ghost children walking through his house. Why? I don't know I am still trying to figure out why he doesn't turn on the lights. More cheap jump scares and like us, Ethan has had enough and dumps the projector and 8mm reels into the trash and burns them. He packs up the family and heads back to their old place which is a much better house, I might add, makes no sense why they would leave it. So putting some boxes up in the attic at his old house what does he find up there, yup the same old projector and murder reels this time with an envelope featuring extended footage. Will Ethan crack the case of who is murdering these families before his is next, will he ever turn on the lights in a dark house, at almost two hours will this drawn out movie ever end?
The biggest crime of any movie is that it is boring and to me Sinister was just that. I had heard this film was a long the lines of those Insidious movies or whatever was coming out in the 2010s that Hollywood was trying to sell us as scary, but to me this film missed the mark. Grant it all the super 8 films looked good and disturbing, but there were far too many cheap loud noise jump scares going on in this film. Too many pointless subplots that led to nothing and too many unrealistic scenarios. This film really could of used a lot of editing to trim the fat. It did have a down ending which was redeeming, but too little too late. Of course it led itself to a sequel a few years later to tell us more about Slipknot guy I am sure, but you are on your own for that one. I will be avoiding anymore Sinister movies.
Sinister
110 minutes
Dir. Scott Derrickson
USA/2012
One of the movies that came out awhile back that I never got a chance to see when it was released and then just kept getting pushed back further and further on the list. So tonight let's see what is so sinister about Sinister
Open-mouthed always worried looking Ethan Hawke is a true-crime writer who moves his family into the house whose previous residents were murdered and daughter went missing. Ethan is chasing his next big writing break and thinks if he can break this case he will be on easy street. Ethan's wife doesn't want to know what he writes about or what happened in the house. His daughter paints on the walls (you see where this is going) and his son has night terrors, which really amount to nothing with the story other then trying to be a red herring and give you fake scares.
While Ethan is putting a box away in storage upstairs in a barren attic, he finds a box out in the open filled with 8mm reels and a projector. His inquisitive detective mind of course sets up the projector in his office and begins to discover what is on each reel, which first shows families having fun together and shows them tied, gagged and murdered further on in the filming. Morbidly enough this is probably the most effective part of the film, as all these murder scenes were shot on actual super 8mm and look authentic enough. Very grisly and disturbing subject matter.
Ethan transfers the super 8 to digital and studies each scene discovering some reoccurring themes, some mystical symbol present at each murder scene and a member of Slipknot standing and watching in the background. Ok maybe not really, but someone wearing a mask that looks like he could play in Slipknot shows up as each murder takes place. As Ethan is putting pieces of the murders together he starts hearing noises in his house and goes to investigate. But what was not explained in the film that I had to figure out for myself is Ethan has built in night vision and can see in the dark, because HE DOESN'T TURN ON ANY GOD DAMN LIGHTS AS HE SEARCHES HIS HOUSE AT NIGHT! Ok maybe he doesn't have night vision, maybe the house just has no light bulbs in it. Seriously my wife doesn't shut any lights off and Ethan can't be bothered to turn any on especially when he is looking for something or someone. I am sorry but this type of thing bugs the shit out of me and can be a movie's downfall. This time it does not though, there are plenty other things going on here that do that.
Anyway where were we, oh yeah looking around in a dark house for noises. Usually those noises turn out to be his hippy son sleep walking or something from having night terrors. But sometimes those noises are the projector turning on itself or sometimes the noises are made by the ghost children walking through his house. Why? I don't know I am still trying to figure out why he doesn't turn on the lights. More cheap jump scares and like us, Ethan has had enough and dumps the projector and 8mm reels into the trash and burns them. He packs up the family and heads back to their old place which is a much better house, I might add, makes no sense why they would leave it. So putting some boxes up in the attic at his old house what does he find up there, yup the same old projector and murder reels this time with an envelope featuring extended footage. Will Ethan crack the case of who is murdering these families before his is next, will he ever turn on the lights in a dark house, at almost two hours will this drawn out movie ever end?
The biggest crime of any movie is that it is boring and to me Sinister was just that. I had heard this film was a long the lines of those Insidious movies or whatever was coming out in the 2010s that Hollywood was trying to sell us as scary, but to me this film missed the mark. Grant it all the super 8 films looked good and disturbing, but there were far too many cheap loud noise jump scares going on in this film. Too many pointless subplots that led to nothing and too many unrealistic scenarios. This film really could of used a lot of editing to trim the fat. It did have a down ending which was redeeming, but too little too late. Of course it led itself to a sequel a few years later to tell us more about Slipknot guy I am sure, but you are on your own for that one. I will be avoiding anymore Sinister movies.
Comments
Post a Comment