REVIEW: ‘Sinister’ stays true to its name
As soon as the trailers started rolling, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. Scary movies are not my forte, so I knew it would be a long hour and a half.
“Sinister” lives up to its name and provided a good dose of anxiety for this incredibly jumpy columnist with a mix of reality and the supernatural.
Ellison Oswalt, played by Ethan Hawke, gave a solid performance. The movie begins as Oswalt and his family start unpacking boxes in their temporary home. We soon learn the move is inspired by a book Oswalt, a famous author, is working on, but it’s not the first time he has uprooted his family causing the kids alienation at school and abandonment from their father.
Ten years back, his best seller “Kentucky Blood” put him on the map, and apparently helped to solve a heinous crime mystery.
It turns out the family has moved into the home of a murdered family – hanged in their own back yard.
Good plan, buddy.
Oswalt doesn’t tell his wife because she said doesn’t want to know, but the kids find out quickly from school gossip and, oh you know, just a handful of soul sucked children wandering around the house.
On the first day of the move, Oswalt finds a box full of old film reels in the attic and later discovers the same attic had been empty in crime scene photos.
“Why come back?,” Oswalt wrote on a sticky note – because apparently writing questions in all caps and plastering them on a cork board is the best way to start an investigation.
As the whiskey-loving writer continues to watch the sinister acts committed toward different families, he picks up on the trend that the youngest family member always goes missing and is not seen in the horrific home videos. The bodies are never found.
He also finds a recurring symbol which, with further research, is revealed to belong to a cult that steals young children, eats them, and then lives longer as a result of devouring the youthful souls.
A creepy ugly murderer guy – Mr. Boogie – shows up in all the home videos and inevitably back in the Oswalt family’s backyard.
As the young son Trevor continually has night terrors, the mom finally says, “We can pack up and get out of here.” But no, we can’t use logic and avoid having one of our kids become a soulless monst
er because this could be the next Kentucky Blood, and I’ll get back on Jon Stewart.
Really, bro?
As Oswalt continues to have a party in his liver, more and more strange events occur, from unexplained noises to a big growling dog and of course, the frequent appearance of soul sucked kids from the previous murders.
It becomes apparent pretty early there is not going to be a happy ending for this family, but by the time we get to this point, everyone is already pretty sick of the self-absorbed alcoholic father, his enabling wife and the night-terrored son.
The film was interesting. It had a decent plot and solid acting, but I wouldn’t recommend it – mainly because as I’m typing this review in my iPhone notes in the movie theater parking lot I feel like I could throw up. By the end, I was wishing Oswalt would pass me a flask so I could just forget this whole thing.
Regardless of my pansy-ness, this was a good film, and for horror lovers of the world, it was fairly smart. I’m giving it a C+ and I’m going to give myself a Xanax.
– Natasha Bodily is a super senior in public relations. She is a lover of the arts and has seen 15 broadway shows. Emails can be sent to natashabodily@gmail.com or Twitter:Natasha627