Sinister

The most appropriately titled horror picture of the year is “Sinister;” here is a scary movie that succeeds in ensnaring and sustaining a sense of nightmarish dread that could only have been cooked up in the most fearful of minds. It opens on blood-curdling images that will be revisited several times throughout the film: a family of four being hanged from a tree in their own backyard. Director Scott Derrickson proceeds to squeeze every last droplet of suspense he can out of the situations he presents. At one point, my heart was pounding inside my chest so loudly I feared I might require medical attention. I prevailed and later walked out of the screening with goose bumps dotting my arms and legs.

The film’s setting is 2012, but realistically, it could be any year. True-crime novelist Ellison Osborne (Ethan Hawke, “Daybreakers”) moves into the suburban house notorious for the aforementioned family massacre. He moves with his wife, Tracy (stage actress Juliet Rylance), and two children (Claire Foley and Michael Hall D'Addario), all of whom are oblivious to their new home’s claim to infamy. Ellison hasn’t had a hit in the 10 years following his bestselling book “Kentucky Blood.” He hopes this new subject matter will prove a means for him to reclaim his past glory. It proves itself to be much more than that.

During one of many ill-advised trips to the attic, Ellison finds a mysterious box containing a rusty projector and five Super 8 film reels. The canisters are labeled innocently enough: “Family Hanging Out,” “BBQ,” “Lawn Work,” “Pool Party” and “Sleepy Time.” Upon setting up the projector in his office, Ellison discovers their contents are less so: each film shows a voyeur’s view of a family from behind bushes and outside windows before depicting their gruesome murders. Horrified but hopelessly intrigued, Ellison investigates: the earliest depicted murder dates back to the 1960s, and in each case the youngest child went missing, never to be seen again.

Ellison takes on the role of an amateur detective. He pins photos, print-outs and post-it notes on a board in his office and observes the snuff movies frame by frame. In one piece of footage, he spots a figure with a pasty white face, blackened eyes and no mouth. Late one night, he sees this figure peering up at him from the bushes in the backyard. Soon enough, Ellison is tiptoeing down dark hallways with a baseball bat in hand as creaks and thuds come from every corner of the house, explained away by others as squirrels running about in the attic.

It is here that “Sinister” evolves from murder mystery story into haunted house horror, a transition made seamless by the consistently bone-chilling tone. This tone is more consistent than that of the comparable “Insidious," which spent much of its runtime unsettling its audience with an eerie aura only to take a turn for the goofy in its bombastic third act. This is not the case here: for the entirety of its length, “Sinister" is raw, old-school horror that builds up skin-crawling suspense and pays it off with lashings of hair-raising terror.

At times, the scares — jump-scares, but damn good ones — are predictable. Keep an ear out for when the soundtrack fades out, when the silence overwhelms, for a deafening thud or otherworldly presence is imminent. We soon get used to this. But then the movie tricks us: the soundtrack — unnerving as it may be — is no longer a comfort, and the monsters start to come out when we least expect them. I’m thinking specifically of the “Lawn Work” film, the punch-line of which caused every one of my fellow movie-goers to leap two feet in the air; I’m not embarrassed to say I joined them.

The snuff movies take on a Hellish nature, like they came from the fiery pits of the Devil’s lair. Initially cheerful scenes of a family’s daily activities ominously filmed from afar are followed by grisly images of bloody murder, complete with pagan symbols and demonic faces. The projector switches itself on in the middle of the night, rousing Ellison, and Ellison alone, from his sleep. The graininess of the footage and the whirring of the projector contribute to the old-school feel that “Sinister” boasts, and the films’ accompanying soundtracks have a diabolical quality to them — “Sinister” features some of the most masterful sound design I’ve heard used in a modern-day horror flick.

The story relies on our belief that Ellison would place his family in a position of danger for the sake of fame and fortune. Hawke, an underrated actor, makes us believe this, and makes us sympathise with him in spite of it. Scenes of Ellison swigging back whisky and wielding a baseball bat will remind some of Jack Torrance, also a writer, from “The Shining.” Hawke inhabits a similarly unhinged mindset, as the horrors his character witnesses cause him to question reality and disturb his once-stable relationship with his increasingly concerned wife. We see Hawke at his relatable best here in what is his finest performance since the multi-layered crime-drama “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”

We are told in promotional material that “Sinister” is from the producer of “Paranormal Activity" and “Insidious:" in terms of scares and overall quality, it lives up to the former and betters the latter. I’d advise avoiding the trailer for the film: it gives away several of the big scares, but not all. The director and co-writer, Scott Derrickson, previously made the chilling horror-drama “The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and the stale blockbuster remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still." Horror seems to be his forte: “Sinister” is one of the most effective spook-em-ups of the past few years. With luck, it will turn a buck and not be made into the next “Saw” series, year after year churning out sequel after sequel. But I know Hollywood all too well.

8/10