This is my brain on…Sinister
The season is upon us. The wind blows a little cooler today than yesterday, leaves turn then fall, sweater weather.
And in honor of such occasion, it’s time to dust off the greatest sweater to appear on a body since The Dude — Ethan Hawke’s Sinister sweater. Ah, what a day.
Right off the bat, I love Sinister. I love it more than most Blumhouse movies, especially these days. I love Ethan Hawke, I love Bughuul, I love Vincent D’Onofrio, love love love. Sinister pairs a stellar performance from the leading man with a truly terrifying supernatural villain, with bumps and bruises along the way. It is in no way a perfect horror film, I think I can see the hands of some studio execs pulling at the creators, kind of like the ghost hands pulling at the main character halfway through the film, squirming and weaseling more “scary stuff” into the cracks and crevices. But overall, left to the devices of an incredibly talented director (Scott Derrickson) and a solid script (Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill — check out their Twitter accounts, they’re gems), Sinister remains one of my personal favorite horror movies.
We meet Ellison and his useless wife (not her fault, she’s written that way) moving into a new home with their two kids. They’re met with a bit of the ol’ exposition from the local cops, where we learn that Ellison is a one-time best selling true crime author whose not so great reputation has followed him. We find out that he has moved his family into a murder house, I guess his wife can’t do her own research on their new house so she remains clueless to this fact, and that the town is none too happy about it.
A great aspect to Sinister is that it jumps head first into the good stuff early on. Fourteen minutes into the film Ellison has found a mysterious box of home movies, taught himself how to use a projector, and has no problem poking around in other people’s business by watching the first film. Its haunting music thrusts us into a world that we no longer recognize. The grainy home footage on the screen starts off with a happy family having a catch in the backyard, before quickly devolving into violence that Ellison and we as the audience feel we should look away from, but for some reason can’t.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the score when these home films are played. It’s unlike any music I’ve heard in a horror film and invokes the type of hair raising dread that is both classic and entirely unique. Hawke’s expression as he realizes what he is watching is one of true horror. But there is a very clear awareness, as he begins to rewind and replay over and over, that he has discovered his white whale.
For a moment, after watching the second home movie, Ellison contemplates doing the right thing, going so far as to call the police, only to hang up after realizing that the career redemption he’s striving for won’t be possible without keeping this footage a secret. He never stops to think about why the box was in the attic and not locked away in an evidence room. But I guess that’s the rookie mistake of a character who doesn’t realize he’s in a supernatural horror movie.
I’d like to note the lighting in Sinister. It’s a dark film, with Ellison’s face often shrouded in shadow, even during the day. There’s an entire sequence where we walk with Ellison through the pitch black house exploring strange noises and we really can’t see a damn thing. Natural light from the moonlight casts shadows on the wall, Ellison’s phone gives us brief glances at his worried face. It pulls me in, deep, that and the spare music choice, mostly quiet tiptoes and the sporadic BANG that wrenches up the tension. Hawke’s acting here is superb, he seems so scared, yelling in surprise, concern, anger, it’s all there and we believe it. This entire scene, minutes long, is designed to lead Ellison to the attic, to a box lid that he didn’t see before, with child-like drawings of each of the murders on the tape. And now we are introduced to “Mr. Boogie” — the demon Bughuul, the “devourer of children”.
The first glimpse we get of Bughuul is when Ellison is watching the swimming pool murders, and Bughuul is wandering around the bottom of the pool. Bughuul is a very effective villain, and it is the case that, as Ellison looks at the paused film, staring closely at the image of Bughuul, I have the eerie feeling that he is staring right back. At this early point, we don’t know the name of the demon or what he does, but we do know it ain’t good.
The violence in Sinister is filmed in an interesting way. One home movie shows the killer moving from room to room, slitting the throats of an entire family, but at each moment of carnage, the camera cuts away, so that we see what is happening in the reflection of Ellison’s glasses, or blurred in the background as he swigs straight from the whiskey bottle. It’s a creative way to show the violence, but I do sometimes wonder why Sinister got an R-rating as so much of the violence is off screen.
At one point, Ellison watches a tape of his younger self and we see how much of his determination and drive is controlled by his ego. It’s the reason why, when fucked up shit starts happening in the house; his son’s horrific night terrors return ten-fold (amazing scene), noises and inexplicable sounds wake him up, he doesn’t just cut and run. A part of him really doesn’t know something…sinister…is afoot, but also his ego just won’t let him drop the possibility of regaining that notoriety and fame he once enjoyed.
As much as I love this movie, it’s by no means perfect. The first half is stronger than the second, and as it goes on there are more and more cliche devices used to drum up scares. Ghost kids muck about, shushing people for no reason, faces in photos moving so only we see it, other pointless and basic attempts at eerieness that don’t really work. But there is a jolt of life infused in the second act and that’s through an absolutely brilliant home video involving a perfectly timed sound cue and that’s all I’ll give you because you need to go into it not expecting a thing. Also, hello Vincent D’Onofrio! D’Onofrio-ing all over the place, coming in on a zoom chat to drop truth bombs all over the place. The exposition he provides is forgiven its laziness because he’s the tits. And this is the point that we are introduced officially to Bughuul and are shocked, shocked, shocked by his deviant behavior. It’s an important moment, too, because Ellison is finally exposed to the fact that he is dealing with a supernatural entity, and that every second he spends continuing the investigation puts him and his family in danger. So now he has the information, all he has to do is use it.
Following the Bughuul reveal is my least favorite moment in the movie and one of those moments that I feel was shoved in as an afterthought. This scene has Ellison bopping around the house in the dark while dead kiddos in real bad makeup run around being little assholes and fucking with him, and us. I don’t understand this shit and boy do I wish it were left for the deleted scenes. It’s not scary at all and further saps at the great tension the movie has been successfully building. And at this point, I have to say, turn the goddamn lights on, Ellison.
So much of Sinister is so, so good. It builds to a climax that I’m sure a lot of people hated but that I absolutely love. It’s basically a one man show, and because that man is Ethan Hawke I’m all the way in, and with the score guiding us through this single location mystery, it keeps the lid on while the water slowly boils and I give a lot of credit for sustaining suspense through basically the whole film. Some of the jumps are cheap, some of the acting (talking to you, kids) is bad, but overall I think this is one of the great horror films of the past ten years. And I hope Ethan Hawke got to take that sweater home and that he wears it as much as Ellison does.
Could do without: On the nose notes Ellison writes to himself/us like “Where is Stephanie?”. All scenes with ghost children running around in slow motion.
Could do with more: Story for the wife, though their fight scene is awesome.