Sinister (2012)

I recently re-watched this one with a friend I used to work with.  I finally got around to replacing the TV that Rob took when he moved out and I wanted to test it out, so I invited my friend for movie night.  She had never seen Sinister and, since I have apparently burned out every other friend I have with regard to horror movies, I jumped at the chance to show it to her.  She enjoyed the film but told me that if she had been watching it by herself, she would have turned it off at the first jump scare and then started texting everyone she knew so she wouldn't feel alone. I feel that proves the success of this movie.  I know I was struck once again by the effectiveness of the sound effects.  I don't have a surround sound set-up any more, but I still felt like this was one of the best atmospheric movies I have seen in a long time.
Originally posted:  6/10/13    I subjected Rob and Christy to this one last night.  I don't know if they'll ever let me pick a horror movie again.  I've gotten pretty jaded, considering that every advertisement for the latest horror flick uses the words "intensely scary!" or "scariest movie ever" or "you will pee yourself in fear!"  And then I see them and I come away dry-pantsed.

This movie, though, is the real deal.  I kept getting more excited the more I watched.  It hit all the right categories.

Good mythology:  10 out of 10
Good creature/special effects:  9 out of 10
Creepy-ass imagery:  8 out of 10
Creepy-ass soundtrack:  9 out of 10

I only took a couple of points off because all the really disturbing shit was already in all the trailers which detracts a bit for me.  I'm tempted to add them back, however, just based on the possibility of a cool Halloween costume.

True crime writer Ellison (Ethan Hawke) has spent the last ten years chasing the elusive scent of success.  His latest venture is to move his wife and two children into the house previously inhabited by a family that was ritualistically murdered.  You know, for research.  Ellison soon finds he's out of his depth when he starts watching a set of home movies he finds in the otherwise empty attic instead of turning them over to the police.  Ellison violates the first rule of horror films:  By putting his desire for fame ahead of his family's well-being, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.

You gotta love a clearly defined morality.

Anyway, he figures out that each roll of film is a gruesome murder of a family, with the added punch of one child just going missing.  He reaches out to a local professor (Vincent D'onofrio) to get some help with a symbol found at all of the crime scenes and discovers the legend of the Eater of Children.  Then shit really goes down.