Sinister (2012)

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, & James Ransone

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Original ideas in horror are hard to come by given the nature of the genre. The fans all want to be scared, some want blood and gore, and do we ever really want to see a happy ending? The idea behind Sinster was simple, lets give fans a little bit of everything and see how they react. Seeking peace and solitude, real crime writer, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), moves his family to the country, unaware that the house he's living in has a checkered past. That is until he finds an old movie projector with 8mm films, that will horrify the man to his core. Having children as the perpetrators of these crimes was my favorite part of the film, I love it when horror movies do that, because what could be scarier than an evil child. You take the most innocent thing in the world, turn it evil, and once that happens what can you do about it? Would you be able to shoot a kid? So how do you stop them? The idea is bone chilling. I also liked the fact that they touch on every aspect of the genre they could from ghosts to possession, from gore to jump scares, they really did include a lot. The problem however is that the film focuses on Ethan Hawke, who tries to shield his family from what's happening, while investigating the events on his own, and this makes the time in between events move at a snails pace. With so much going for it, this is a movie that should have a lot going on, not long periods of nothingness. Personally I'd like to see the story focus on a child and watch as he/she transforms into one of the kids in the 8mm films, that would be cool. For what it's worth, this wasn't a bad film, the cast was pretty good, and they did a lot with what they had, but ultimately Sinister just moved a little too slowly for me.