Sinister

It's all done in questionable taste, mucking around in the nasty terrain of snuff films and children in constant peril, but Sinister is smart and well-crafted, and it scarcely gives the audience a moment to breathe.

It comes together with a gruesome though excellent ending that some will find difficult to shake.

Occasionally stupid (stretching even fright-flick conventions) but scary nonetheless, the picture should please horror fans.

Here's the thing: Found footage is scary when - because - it leaves you to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself. But actually watching whole families have terrible things done to them - well, hard-core horror fans may dig it, I guess. I'd call it forced voyeurism of the worst sort.

Ellison's fascination with celluloid to solve a crime recalls Antonioni's "Blowup," but Scott Derrickson is unable to conjure an aura that isn't as transparent and weightless as a ghost.

The movie is full of feints, shocks and scenes of particularly perverse violence, but nothing about it is fresh enough to haunt you in the night. It's predictable.

Sinister is pretty much everything to hate about modern horror in one mixed bag, a ramshackle teardown of jump-scares and creaky tricks, saw-it-coming "surprises" and the lead-footed thud of inevitability as it tediously places one clumsy foot in front of the other, plodding towards a finale that comes far too late.

The scariest film I've ever seen! Absolutely fantastic, the soundtrack fits the vibe perfectly and the scares are great!

Standard horror trope movie with good execution on the cinematography. The opening scene is very ominous, and hooks the viewer. I've not seen a lot of movies that have something like that. Ethan Hawke is a good leading man. Not a lot of 'jump scares', but the atmosphere is dark and the score induces subtle anxiety.

Sinister is pretty disappointing once you put all the pieces together before the protagonist does. I say that because it's hinted at throughout the movie, and how Ellison doesn't get any of this through his thick skull is an incredible sign of stupidity.

This is one of my least favourite Blumhouse films. They generally make really uneven films and their slate is just as uneven. For the most part Sinister is dull and predictable. Admittedly there are creepy moments but this is let down by poorly executed jump scares. Acting and sound design is solid. Cinematography, unusually for a 'modern' Hollywood film is actually not very good. I found the contrast too high and the dark areas were too crushed of detail, visually it looked lazy. Hereditary (2018) suffers from a very dull first half but at least the second half is scary and memorable. This suffers from two dull halves and nothing original or memorable, it's like Hereditary was the half-hearted apology for Sinister. Don't bother.

As a good horror movie lover, you are honestly not good at all. The story resembles "The Ring", but it fails in the plot, with average performances and the supernatural side poorly worked. Boring.