Filmic Frighteners - Sinister (15)

You can never explain something like this. And if you were able to, the odds are you wouldn't much care for the answer.

The Gist: Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a struggling true-crime writer, who moves himself and his family into a house where a horrific quadruple-murder took place. (Of course he omits to tell them the grim truth about their new dwelling.) In the attic he discovers a super 8 home-movie collection detailing similar crimes to the one he's researching for his new book. As he becomes obsessed by his investigation into the recordings, he wrestles with a terrifying suspicion - that the source of the killings may be more sinister (and less human) than anything he had previously imagined.

The Juice:Made back in 2012, Sinister is a nasty variant on the haunted house tale, with the found footage in the attic providing the worst of the nasty. The opening shot is truly unsettling, and it's not the only moment of genuine horror. Ethan Hawke brings weight to the central role in a performance that digs deep into fear and obsession; the fact that we stick with his steadily more harrowed viewpoint bodes nothing good. There's well-played drama between him and his long-suffering wife (Juliet Rylance), while interactions with an eager police deputy (James Ransone) supply a welcome element of humanity and understated humour. Director Scott Derrickson gradually mimics the style of the super 8 footage in the rest of the movie, as though Ellison's world is being infected by what he uncovered on film. 

The Judgement: 7/10. Sinister is at its most effective in the character-driven scenes and when Ethan Hawke is absorbing all the ghastly celluloid imagery in a darkened attic. The creeping-around-the-house-at-3am stuff, when the supernatural aspects become more explicit, didn't work quite so well - at least for me. But the performances carry it, along with some macabre ideas nicely executed on screen. And as a story it proves to have the courage of its mean-spirited convictions.

Personal Fear Factor: The paranormal aspect was ultimately too daft to trouble me much, but the found footage scenes chilled, one of them delivering a real moment of shock. And the ending... okay, I'll give them the ending. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr.