You Don't Want to Find This Footage

"Sinister"
Written and Directed by Scott Derrickson
Starring Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance and James Ransone
Rated R
110 Minutes

“Sinister” is a unique found footage movie in that it dispels with the usual gimmick by having the main character actually find film footage in his attic.  He spends a great deal of time watching these films on a super 8 projector and what they show is, well, sinister.  The movie as a whole is pretty creepy, assisted by the atmospheric direction of Scott Derrickson; but “Sinister” doesn’t have a great story to tell, with a thin narrative caught somewhere between convention and a bad case of writer’s block.

The film actually introduces us to a writer named Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), a true crime author that moves his family into a house where a crime took place.  Ellison keeps this information from his wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance), perhaps because he knows she won’t approve.  After all, they have two children who are at that age where strange behavior is the norm, and the last thing they would need is to be influenced by the grisly details of dad’s research.  So Tracy persists that he must keep his office door locked at all times, and doesn’t seem to mind that he stays up to all hours of the night, every night.  He rationalizes that he hasn’t had a hit book in ten years and this is the story everyone will want to read.  I guess he could have worse habits; like staying up all night to play video games or something.
  

Ellison soon finds a box of family home movies in the attic.  Each canister has a generic label like “family hanging out 98’”, etc.  He figures they might help with his research and begins to watch them in his office in the wee hours of the night.  They are family home movies, all right; they just happen to contain footage of families meeting their end in variously brutal fashion.  I shouldn’t have to tell you that the family that used to live in Ellison’s house is included also, and the film’s opening shot is of four of them being hung from a tree.  I also shouldn’t have to tell you that Ellison discovers, with the help of a Deputy “So and So” (seriously) played by James Ransone, that all the murders on the films are connected.  To deal with this, Ellison does things that don’t make sense, like drink whiskey and ignore his family’s mental health concerns.  I might also add, that if I am a true crime author claiming that the reason I write true crime is to expose the truth and bring justice to the murder victims, and I have a box of murder movies that if shown to the police would do exactly that, then I should consider calling them.  But does Ellison?  To be fair, the screenplay allows him a brief moment to consider it.

The super 8 footage is undoubtedly disturbing and scary, to the point where we are distracted from the fact that not a whole lot else is actually happening.  Oh, all the usual stuff happens, like a floor creaking and a few things going bump in the night.  But none of these events push the story forward.  When Ellison starts to notice a mysterious figure with a freaky face in stills of all the footage, he does some poking around only to uncover a wishy-washy mythology regarding some demon that has no good intentions for children.  To that point, I’ll say that considering the way “Sinister” uses children in the narrative, nobody should allow their child to watch this movie.  Ever.  Trust me; the world has enough problems with misbehaving kids.
  

“Sinister” really isn’t a good time at all.  I guess in retrospect, the sure-handed direction and intense dread really isn’t worth what the movie has to say; which isn’t much.  Oh there are a few decent jump scares and disturbing images that might stay with you but you can get those in any other horror movie, can’t you?  Here’s a thought: “Sinister” has received an R rating by the MPAA but doesn’t contain a single use of the F word or even a bit of sexual content.  This is one instance where I stand in full support of their rating.  They clearly didn’t want kids under the age of 17 to go anywhere near this movie.  And I don’t blame them.