A WASHED-UP WRITER MOVES HIS FAMILY INTO THE WRONG HOUSE
★★★★★ (A Must-See)
Director: Scott Derrickson
2012
Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a true crime writer who hasn’t had a hit book in years. Feeling the squeeze of his own ego, he searches for a murder that might inspire another bestseller, and this leads him to a nice home for sale in a quiet, wooded neighborhood. Little does his wife and two young kids know as they move in their boxes, that he has hid an essential fact about the house: An entire family was recently murdered in the backyard. In Ellison’s mind, the less his brood knows, the better the chance they won’t bug him as he does research on the crime. He’s a man who feels confined by his marriage and children, so ignoring their possible feelings is not out of character. Unfortunately, they will soon find out his secret. Ellison’s investigation, as you can imagine, takes him to darker places than any author can conjure.
Sinister is one of the most terrifying films I’ve ever seen, and though horror is subjective, a Broadband Choices “Science of Scare” study once named it the scariest flick of all time. Over the years, I’ve tried to analyze why I can’t watch Sinister alone at night, despite having seen it so many times. I suppose all the stars aligned when it comes to what scares me: specific sound editing and a director who hides an image in an earlier scene, only to frighten you with it later. I also went into this film not knowing anything. Many people who wave off Sinister as “not that great” Googled the images or knew too much about it beforehand. This is a warning to you to not do anything but press play.
Much like Them (2006), Sinister excels thanks to the sound, or lack thereof. The first scene is a silent movie of people who are about to be murdered, and without being introduced to the situation, we are aware the clicking of the film reel is a ticking time bomb to their deaths. The music is a tribal beat far in the distance, the house at night is full of hollow sounds and whistling wind in the attic. Like David Lynch, Derrickson plants the monster in earlier images—what you don’t see is what freezes your heart. Finally, there’s Ethan Hawke, who makes an egotistical schmuck like Ellison feel like someone who could be your neighbor, or the guy married to your cousin. Hawke has always had a nose for excellent scripts; I loved him in Daybreakers and the Before Sunrise movies and just about everything he’s done, even if the project isn’t up to snuff. Perhaps his background as an author himself has something to do with it. I can see what appealed to him when it came to the character of Ellison.
The movie resonates with me not because I’m a writer, but because I’m interested in the macabre, and like Ellison, I would be nosy enough to watch those spooky film reels. Ellison is not the tortured genius he thinks he is, so after working the case, he discovers too late that he’s in way too deep—and that it may harm the very family he’s sick and tired of. This dynamic between a creative man and a wife who just wants to pay the bills is so real. Serial killers and murder is a lonely hobby, and it’s yet another thing that separates Ellison from his own loved-ones. Sinister is an excellent film that does everything a horror movie should. I know these people, I know this situation. When the supernatural arrives, it could arrive in my own house.
GENRES: Atmospheric, Monster/Creature
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this website's (nicolinatorres.com) blog posts or publications to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.