Sinisterly Good

There we were, watching film trailers trying to decide what to watch at the cinema and the decision came down to Sinister or the Perks of Being a Wall Flower. There couldn’t be two films far enough from each other on the genre scale. We went for the Sinister (rated 15)  in the end, I mean, who wouldn’t want to try a film where inside the first minute you see a helpless family hang and die from a tree? My thoughts exactly.

Sinister is directed by Scott Derrickson, who you may know from the  Exorcism of Emily Rose or on a lighter note the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. It didn’t take me long to realise whoever directed this film is a serious horror junkie.

So, after we see the poor helpless family die and find out a child of the family has disappeared – never to be found – we meet Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke). Ellison is a crime novelist searching for fame after his first and last successful novel 10 years ago. He moves his family to locations not far away from murder scenes, however this new location has a twist,  unknown to his family, this is where a murdered family were hung.

As they begin to unpack Ellison starts work on his new novel immediately, after finding a mysterious projector and a bunch of side reels upstairs in the attic. He watches of them, and sees a family drown underneath the water strapped to their deck chairs. Not a nice way to go in my opinion – I’d like to think there was. As he studies the reel he finds a ghoul lurking under water. For me this is where you want to get your family and run the hell out of there, or so you would think! However this entices his investigations further which puts him and his family in grave danger.

With many nights of him walking around with a baseball bat, walking round corners of the house expecting many sinister jumpy bits to get you screaming, the movie becomes very intense. You feel relieved when the sun rises and you see his family dining at the breakfast table, though you fear for what the night ahead has in store.

Sinister is a good horror which gets your heart pumping. The scenes in which Ellison investigates in are a little slow, and in contrast the final scenes feel a little bit rushed, so the explanation of ghostly ghouls isn’t one I would want to tackle. Also the fact you’re already thinking about getting out the cinema because your adrenaline levels are threw the roof and feel genuinely scared.

Let’s just say never again when choosing a film will I choose a horror over a teenage flick – Emma Watson, why didn’t you do more persuade me so I watched the Perks of Being a Wall Flower instead?