Review: Sinister (15)

Packed with deliberately distracting quasi Hitchcockian McGuffins designed to lead gullible viewers down multiple blind alleys, Sinister begins well and presents an enjoyably creepy first half before running out of steam.
By Tony Earnshaw
Published 5th Oct 2012, 11:03 BST

Ethan Hawke is Ellison, a veteran crime writer specialising in after-the-event investigations of brutal murders, who looks to the quadruple lynching of an ordinary suburban family to restore his waning reputation.

To inspire him he rents the house where the murders took place, but what he doesn’t expect is to discover a box of old cine film that appears to show the murder – and others – being committed.

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Suddenly he becomes acutely aware that his latest book may end up chronicling not one mass killing but several scattered over the decades. And one culprit appears to be responsible...

Writer/director (and horror specialist) Scott Derrickson’s film is a haunted house thriller, a serial killer chiller, a snuff movie, a paranoid melodrama and a whodunit where the crimes may be down to evil children. Or it may be a shadowy figure that lurks in the darkness: something far older and more malevolent than Ellison can ever imagine.

Sinister strives to be original but very little is these days. The fact that it peters out underlines how it fails to shore up its initial premise. In that respect it’s a cop-out – a film that promises a lot but ultimately falls short.