After achieving good success with the novel “Kentucky Blood”, a thriller based on a real-life crime, writer Ellison Oswalt gradually fell into obscurity. Now Ellison wants to try again and decides to dedicate himself to another true-crime novel. To find the right inspiration and investigate firsthand, he moves with his family to King County, into the very house where the victims of his book once lived. Ellison writes about the mysterious case of an entire family found hanged from a tree branch in their garden, while the youngest daughter vanished without a trace. The man finds in the attic of the new house a box containing home movies that depict gruesome deaths, including the hanging of the previous tenants. Ellison realizes he has controversial material in his hands, but instead of reporting the discovery to the police, he begins analyzing the films for his novel. But those films are linked to a malevolent entity, and the moment Ellison saw them, he awakened it!
An interesting trend is sweeping through Hollywood: making low-budget horror films with domestic themes involving haunted houses and ancient demons. The man behind this trend is Jason Blum, a producer with a keen eye for making low-cost films that rake in huge profits. Some titles from Blumhouse? The “Paranormal Activity” saga (where it all began), “Insidious”, and “Sinister”, films that cost no more than $5 million and managed to gross an average of $80-$100 million in the U.S. alone. “Sinister” fits this trend, as the theme is the same, the budget very low ($3 million), and the box office earnings reached $50 million in the U.S. alone.
The secret of these films lies undoubtedly in the fact that they focus heavily on scaring the audience, on the allure of the unknown, the afterlife, and the mysteries that can lurk within our homes, perhaps at night, when we are most vulnerable and think we are safe.
“Sinister” plays heavily on these elements and manages to create near-constant tension that contributed to its success, being elected on multiple fronts as one of the most terrifying films of recent years. Okay, there might be a bit of exaggeration in these claims, but we must acknowledge that director Scott Derrickson managed to create a decent machine of terror that plays brilliantly with the atmosphere and the suggestion of the protagonist, who inevitably overlaps with the viewer. The slow, schematic, and sometimes culpably repetitive progression of “Sinister” helps to perfectly immerse oneself in Ellison Oswalt, a writer facing creative difficulties and a production slump who suddenly finds himself catapulted into an incredible nightmare. His obsessive quest for the truth, common to many “doomed” characters in cinema and literature, plunges him into a vortex of paranoia and fear that this time has very solid foundations, given that the events that follow would test the nerves of anyone. His continuous and manic watching of the snuff films found in the attic undoubtedly leads him to suggestion, which gradually turns into real danger when he discovers that those horrifying films are linked to the cult of the Babylonian demon Bughuul, nicknamed “the children eater”.
Director Scott Derrickson, who cut his teeth with the good “Hellraiser 5: Inferno” and the commercial success “L’Exorcism of Emily Rose”, clarifies that his film is a metaphor for the viewer sitting in the theater watching “Sinister”, just as any viewer engaged in watching a horror film. Essentially, “Sinister” is a horror film about those who watch horror films, about the fears that creep into their minds, about the creaking of wood that inevitably turns into the footsteps of menacing monsters. In this, it is praiseworthy the obsessive consultation by Ellison of the films found, watched always at night in the darkness of his study, unsettling videos of death that bring with them a curse that in some aspects reminds of the Japanese “The Ring” and its American remake. Indeed, it is the director himself who reveals that the idea for “Sinister” was suggested to his co-writer C. Robert Cargill by a nightmare had after watching the film “The Ring”. Both films deal with unsettling cursed films, both turn into races against time to escape death, and in both the child dimension is involved, framed as both victim and perpetrator.
Speaking of this aspect, in “Sinister” what seems to work less is precisely the inclusion of children and especially in the portrayal of child ghosts that at one point populate the Oswalt home. While the child dimension is necessary for the story, even in view of a magnificent ending, the choice to show early the spirits of the missing children feels like an unnecessary trendy choice, since strangely every American and non-American film that deals with the subject of ghosts or haunted houses must essentially have one or more child spirits or who at least talk to ghosts, as if the sensitivity and purity of a child must necessarily overlap with supernatural experiences. And indeed, in a film like “Sinister” where individual scary scenes are remembered effectively, what works less and feels almost intrusive is the scene where Ellison “plays” hide-and-seek at night with the little ghosts.
Highly appealing is the demon Bughuul, here effectively renamed Mr. Boogie, an unsettling presence with a pale face and evil eyes that haunts the death films and becomes the protagonist of at least a couple of the scariest scenes in the film. The scare, however, sometimes relies too much on the easy alternation of sound levels, and while some moments of preparation, including all those involving the viewing of the films or Ellison’s excursions into the attic, work wonderfully, most of their outcomes descend into the banal “BUUU!”.
Very skilled and fitting for the role is the actor Ethan Hawke (“Training Day”; “Daybreakers – The Last Vampire”) who carries almost the entire film on his shoulders. An insecure and frightened character even before embarking on his descent into hell with videotapes because his greatest initial fear is not being able to maintain his celebrity status, as the success given by his previous novel has quickly faded. Ellison Oswalt is therefore an extremely vulnerable yet determined person, ready to do anything to taste success again. His choices, which lead him to cross paths with Bughuul, are at the heart of the film: his fears, his disappointments, and his obsessions, all effectively conveyed in his outburst of anger during his confrontation with his wife (played by Juliet Rylance), stem from those wrong choices that are the crux of all the horror recounted in “Sinister”.
A successful film, then, that focuses heavily on frightening the viewer, sometimes succeeding effectively, other times with easy sonic tricks. Absolutely nothing new in “Sinister”, which instead leans on basic themes and suggestions of certain horror cinema, but this lack of novelty is also the basis of the film’s success, playing with fears as recognizable and shared.
If you want to read the interview with the Italian dubbers of “Sinister” Francesco Bulckaen and Massimo Rossi, click here
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