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10 Oct 2012

Sinister

Sinister is a Christian filmmaker's twisted, creative take on J-horror classic The Ring.

Director: Scott Derrickson

Screenplay: C Robert Cargill

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, James Ransone

A graduate of evangelical Biola University, Scott Derrickson makes genre films (The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Haunting of Emily Rose) that are informed by a moral, even spiritual sensibility. Superior aliens carry out judgement on humanity with angel-like calm and objectivity, while a secular, even agnostic court judges a priest who has performed an exorcism. In Sinister, the moral sensibility is far simpler. There is unspeakable evil in the world; do we dare engage this darkness?

Author Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a Truman Capote wannabe eager to regain his 15 minutes of fame from more than a decade ago when he wrote a "true novel" about the unsolved mystery of a real-life, cold-blooded murder of a family. As it turns out, the hankering for more fame and respect (as well as a desire to pay off his home mortgage post sub-prime crisis) pushes Ellison to relocate his family to a house where an entire family was murdered, save for one of its young children who has disappeared entirely.

There is definite evil in the air. Ellison finds in the attic a mysterious box consisting of a projector and several Super 8 home videos that chronicle the killing of this family in addition to many other families. Not soon after, the projector has a habit of starting by itself dead in the night, playing snuff films that are just slightly different from those he found, he starts seeing visions of a demonic figure resembling Skeletor in the wrestling superstar Undertaker's garb, his son starts sleepwalking, and dead children follow his nocturnal wanderings in the house in a scene out of a Scooby Doo cartoon.

Ellison sees the makings of something that will make him the modern Truman Capote and that's what keeps him on the case in a house he knows isn't safe for him or his family. We see the makings of a murder mystery and a morality play, as written by an alien anthropologist who can't quite write human characters. Of course the novelist is out of his depth, his nerves wrecked by the sinister hauntings, and is in possession of material evidence of several mass murders. Obviously in the bizarro universe of Scott Derrickson, the novelist tells no one about it — including the local deputy sheriff who helps him do the legwork for his novel research — and continues watching the haunted/haunting home videos. And obviously because there is a moral decision here (the lust for fame vs. getting tangled up with Undertaker Skeletor, perhaps), the climax and denouement will give you a fit because the punchline doesn't line up with how the film has built up its moral dilemma.

Sinister gets an A for effort in how it attempts to build up atmosphere and a moral dimension in a Ring-style horror film but sadly doesn't quite deliver all the goods it promises at the end.

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