Sinister: Movie Review

Image courtesy of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1922777/

I recently wrote in an earlier post that "When just the trailer freaks you out, there is a good probability that the movie can too. It's from the creators of Insidious, a movie that wrecked my life for a week. I mean, I seriously had to sleep with the cartoon network on every night for a week. I have to see this with a crowd!" Boy did I overestimate this. I am not saying that it was a bad movie, it was far from it but scariest of the year? No. This is the second movie to have made that claim. The promotional material for V/H/S which I reviewed last week made the same claim. 

That preview looks awesome doesn't it? I really thought that this movie was going to be super scary. It had atmosphere, and it built up a lot of tension, but it wasn't truly scary. It had some imagery that would be considered scary if it had not been shown to us in the commercials 50leven times. This is a case of all the scary scenes being shown to the audience in the previews. This movie's trailer basically spoiled the movie for the audience. It is just not fun knowing what every fright scene is going to be because you've already seen it in the commercial or trailer. Bad. Bad advertising/marketing and or promotional department. Now, go sit in time out and think about what you have done.

It was entertaining. I will give it that. It was original. Thank goodness for that too, because I am getting pretty sick of all this remade crap. As I typed that I immediately recall that before this movie they showed the preview for yet another Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Guess what it's in 3D now, kiddos. To that I say whoopee-goddam-doo. (Cynical? Me, no I prefer the term jaded.) I just remembered something else, it may have difficult for me to be scared by this movie because I kept getting taken out of the moment by the two teenaged jackholes in front of me who paid $10.50 to sit there and text through the whole movie. The movie get's slightly interesting, and then bam I am distracted by the glow of two people texting. They were sitting next to a lady who I think was one of their mothers, and she didn't seem to mind. WTF? Seriously, you can't stop texting for an hour and 50 minutes? I wanted to tweet during the movie too, but I have self control, fu¢k you very much!

Anyway, back to the movie. I really liked the premise, and the writer's descent into madness reminded me of Jack Nicholson's character in the Shining. Not the trying to kill his family part, the going into the bathroom and seeing a naked lady ghost that turns into a (suddenly tattooed) older lady ghost, and then totally denying that he saw anything to his family part. That is this guy throughout the whole movie. The wife's character was done very well and with mostly realistic reactions to things except when it came to her children. Were they written to be annoying and bratty? I mean there is one scene where they are having breakfast and the kids are being smart mouthed and throwing food at each other, and this is just treated as normal acceptable behavior. In another scene the little girl is arguing with her father about them moving there as if she has equal say in all the decision making! Within the first 20 minutes of the movie I almost wanted something bad to happen to those kids. (I know. I am a horrible person.)

Here comes the spoilery part! [Spoiler Alert!]

I had it worked out about 45 minutes into the movie how Mr. Boogie AKA Bugoul does things. Every family that was killed had a one member that was missing. When they showed the first group of people hanging out (still LMAO at the super 8 reel being named "Hanging Out With the Family), and the larger tree limb being used to leverage the hanging, I though duh the surviving member did the killing. That reveal was not surprising at all. So I spent the remainder of the movie guessing whether the surviving member would be the little girl or the little boy.

Can someone tell me why the ghost kids were actually scarier to me than Mr. Boogie? I am sure that Mr. Boogie and his lack of a mouth is meant to be scary, but he just looked like a Halloween costume to me, while the first little ghost girl with the bow in her hair was actually creepy.

This was a pretty good thriller, kind of sort of horror movie. I really liked how the "found footage" (Hey, he did find footage.) scenes were filmed. I was really impressed with the soundtrack. I haven't heard a soundtrack so atmospheric since Suspiria or Erasurehead. Recent movies haven't used a soundtrack to create suspense as effectively as this did. Bratty kids aside, the acting was pretty good as far as I'm concerned. Great movie all and all, just not the scariest for me.

To put that into context I am comparing it to how long it took me to get over other movies. The first movie to wreck my life was Candyman. I couldn't sleep in the dark for week when I saw that movie on video as a teen. The first Ju-On (the original asian version) creeped me out so much I actually had to shut the DVD off and watch it during the daytime, and even then, that movie stayed with me for a week! Insidious stayed with me for a couple days, as did the first Paranormal Activity.  (Man, I need to come up with a rating system.) Sinister is an entertaining and enjoyable movie, just don't get your hopes up for the scares.

Read Review of V/H/S

Read Review of Insidious

Read Most and Least Anticipated Horror Movies List