Review: 'Sinister' starring Ethan Hawke

Sinister comes with a ton of horror pedigree at its disposal, directed by The Exorcism of Emily Rose's Scott Derrickson and produced by the folks who gave us Paranormal Activity, who may have just outdone themselves. Despite once having the unfortunate title of Found Footage, Sinister thankfully has little in common with the worn out subgenre. The premise may seem warmed over and familiar, but Derrickson combines our fear of the supernatural unknown with our more pointed terror of real life serial killers to make what is far and away the scariest movie of the year.

Far too often, horror directors willingly sacrifice good acting and solid character building thinking that more jump scares will make up for it. But the best horror movies are rooted in our most basic, visceral reactions to fear, and so having an actor who can get across the anxiety we're all feeling is crucial. Fortunately for Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill, Ethan Hawke is the perfect guy to embody obsessive and beleaguered crime novelist Ellison Osborne.

The faint of heart will likely go fleeing for the exits after the first creepy scene, in which a family of four is silently, eerily hung from a tree, captured on a grainy and unsettling home movie. Their deaths are the latest to occur in the home that Ellison has just moved his wife and two kids into, with hopes of investigating the crime and writing a book on his findings. A success early in his career, Ellison's recent flops have emptied his bank account and made him the target of police departments everywhere who dislike the cold cases he keeps reopening. The strain has put a damper on their marriage, and driven the son into a fit of night terrors. It's about to get worse in a major way.

Derrickson has always had a gifted hand for crafting an ominous mood, and Sinister may just be the darkest yet. We're used to dank and gloomy "haunted" houses in movies such as this, but this one quickly takes on a cold and putrid air, which only gets worse when Ellison ventures into the attic. Always a no-no. Finding a box of old film reels, Ellison discovers each contains graphic home video footage of a family being slaughtered. Obsessed with discovering the truth of their deaths and why one child always seemed to vanish, he is continuously drawn back to the violent footage, even as it has a detrimental effect on his family.

The killings are tough to watch, and Derrickson puts them right in our face where we have no room to escape. In particular the hangings are a constant presence, and they never cease to be disturbing. Derrickson shows just enough to allow our imaginations to fill in the blanks, showing a masterful control over the psychological. The story veers into supernatural territory with the introduction of a demon who may or may not be involved in the murders, but as Ellison continues to lose his grip on reality it becomes hard to figure exactly how much is true. While incredibly spooky from start to finish, there's also a good deal of humor as Ellison enlists some help from a star-struck local cop(James Ransone) who can't help getting in the way. Vincent D'Onofrio delivers a hammy, overdone performance as a demon expert who reveals his findings over Skype. While the humor is welcome, it also has the effect of blunting some of the film's chilling effectiveness.

Derrickson is pulling many of the same strings as James Wan's Insidious, and finding much of the same success. I'm not afraid to say there were a few times when I deliberately looked in a different direction for fear of seeing something I couldn't handle, and that almost never happens. Sinister is spine-tingling, skin-crawling stuff that should be your horror film of choice this Halloween.