User Reviews

I rarely watch horror films, and this one scared me with its atmosphere. There were no annoying characters, especially children, as is usually the case. The main character's motive was clear, and the narrative, with its gradual revelation of symbols and patterns, was pleasant, albeit frightening.

The atmosphere that Spinster builds throughout the movie using it's old school found footage style camera reel snuff films, and the looming and dark musical score really up launch this film to the top of horror for it's era. It has a few goofy jump scares and random events that happen that bring it down just a notch. Ethan Hawke does a fantastic job as the main character being a loving, yet narcissistic and ego driven husband and father. The supernatural villain of Bughuul is a very enjoy antagonist.

Sono incredibilmente di parte, è il mio film horror preferito. Il bello di sinister è che riesce a terrorizzarti con una storia quasi banale, e da appassionato di horror vi posso dire che questo film è una bomba. Fregatevene delle recensioni a volte negative, è uno dei film piú sottovalutati degli ultimi anni e il finale è qualcosa che non riuscirete a levarvi facilmente di dosso

i love the build up and the foreshadowing before the 3rd act and how they use a lot of dark scene to give a haunting vibes especially when u watch it at night

When at its best sinister challenges the audiences expectations with a compelling mystery and some decent performances. At its worst its a slow moving,often uneventful horror mystery with some poor pacing and various unoriginal plot ideas. In truth with a genre as over saturated as this you could easily pass on watching this unless you're a particular glutton for this genre (as I am lol). Any tension in the story rests on the audience's belief in the family unit and their connection to one another. Put simply, this aspect was poorly explored and leaves the audience doubting their whole connection. For this and multiple other reasons I was whelmed by it.

72/100 The narration pace and editing was amazing, a well crafted slow but breathtaking horror story. It leaves the spectator constantly on edge. Some characters were poorly written and weren't believable at all.

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

A very intriguing new-school horror that keeps you on edge throughout its entire runtime. Unlike films like Mama, this one has a strong ending that doesn’t undermine the tension built earlier. Additionally, while the movie often has strange plot holes or moments where the story makes little sense, the action and atmosphere more than make up for it.

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.

Sinister is a very horrifying and creepy movie. Without spoiling too much, I thought the movie was disturbing due to the plot and the way it was displayed. I quite liked the balance between jump scares and other more psychological ways of scaring the audience. However, I did not like the way that the movie turned towards spiritualism in the end, since it was really unexpected and it felt like a quick and not very thought through way of ending the movie. Overall, I think Sinister is a great horror movie, and for somebody like me who does not watch a lot of horror movies, it gave me a good scare.

It looked pretty cool at first, but nothing that really caught my attention. What got me right away, though, were the scenes from the footage that pulled this film the most for me. I really liked that. I love watching tapes like that, or any recordings in a horror movie. Boogie Man was also good, and scared the crap out of me twice. I really can't remember the last time I got scared at a horror movie. Maybe it's because I was really into it because of how much I liked it, or just hilarious jumpscares. The ending was also in style. Pleasantly surprised. I didn't expect it to end the way it did. Summarum, in my opinion a very successful horror film, lacking perhaps only an even better soundtrack, which was not bad at all, but nothing I will always remember. However, I thought it was a good film and I can recommend it to fans of horror.

There are some movies that cause a visceral reaction, that lodge into your subconscious for days on end and leave a lasting scare. These movies also age well, and offer the same feeling of dread and helplessness years later. I last felt this way with the original remake Grudge of 2004, to the point of sleeplessness for days. Since then I became immune to horror as it's a steady diet of ours, but Sinister scarred again and opened old terrors, even after a rewatch years apart. The movie disturbs on multiple levels, particularly in the thought that innocent kids can be turned into monsters of unimaginable cruelty, a sad parallel to the world today. In the case of Sinister it's particularly terrifying to imagine what ancient evils [and demons] lurk amongst us, silently moving from one victim family to another. Just how many crimes go unexplained and filed away into cold case status, with supernatural aspects that no one wishes to root cause or cure. The found footage aspect of Sinister is heart chilling, the cold methodical way in which entire families are put to death. All the time you swing between pity and disgust at the character played by Ethan Hawke, an obsessed writer aware of the impending danger but unable to resist the temptation to exploit it.

Washed-up true crime writer Ellison Oswalt finds a box of super 8 home movies in his new home that suggest the murder that he is currently researching is the work of a serial killer whose legacy dates back to the 1960s. (7)

It's a great horror film, is one of the best one I've seen in all my life. The stories that are involved just are incredibles and gripping, and I like the sense that they put on it, the sensibility of the children to that type of scary things.

Sinister was different horror experience for me. It had well written story, quality actors and a genuinely creepy atmosphere. Ethan Hawke's role as true crime author is well performed. The chilling tone is set from the opening scene and it slowly builds throughout the film. Overall, would recommend this to horror drama fans.

This has awesome images and scenes aplenty, but an unsatisfying finish. The ending points obviously to volume 2, but I didn't get around to seeing it. I had mixed feelings about this one.

One of the memorable horrors of the decade. Sinister has impressed me with the cinematography and its use of sound along with the music that keeps you on edge. Some of the scares are predictable but at times, the use of sound, suspense and surprise does get you. I would say that most of the scares are unique to any horror I've seen, whilst some are cliché, easy to predict and sometimes are put in place to try and get a good final scare out of you. The movie took the concept of murder mystery and "found footage" and did it properly, less cliché and much more interesting, cutting out the cheesiness where there is a happily family vlogging their happy life where the ghost starts terrorising them after a while *cough* *cough* Paranormal Activity *cough*. This movie got to the point quick which grabbed the attention of the viewer from the start as it should. Personally, I enjoyed this movie, good cast featuring Ethan Hawke and Juliet Rylance and the director showed himself off and wasn't a stranger to this particular horror genre with movies that he directed in the past such as "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" which I have heard good things about. The cuts, shots, cinematography, special effects and especially the sound and music made for a good horror movie and definitely a memorable one, maybe even a future classic our current generation will look back on in a few decades as we have with movies such as "The Exorcist".

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.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

One of the best comedies inside the Horror genre. I don´t know how they managed to include Mick Thompson from Slipknot in the cast... but there it is. Truly awful, BUT with plenty of laughs at the "jump scares" (the children making the hushing gestures are priceless). Definitely more enjoyable with a head full of weed.

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 brilha no que se diz respeito a trama, mas falha no que se propõe: terror. O suspense elevado ao redor do filme é magnífico. Os elementos são postos no seu momento exato, fazendo com que nos adentremos ao filme e com que tenhamos uma maior empatia com os personagens. As atuações do casal são satisfatórias e ambos personagens são bem escritos. Os filhos também fazem bem seu papel. Porém, algo me incomodou muito: os jumpscares. Eu não consegui adentrar na atmosfera de terror que o filme se esforçava tanto em passar, verdade seja dita, me senti mais num suspense do que tudo. Vários Jumpscares são jogados a tela e, além de serem muito previsíveis, nem se quer assustam. Fazendo uma analogia simples, é como se o terror dependesse de um balde d'água. A água pertencente ali é a atmosfera. Sem que o balde esteja cheio, sentimos uma sensação de previsibilidade e acomodação, pois nada nos incomoda. De acordo com que a água sobe de nível, vamos nos sentindo mais inseguros e ansiosos, e ao chegar ao topo, seria então permitido um jumpscare, pois ai seria eficiente. Ou então que se faça como alguns filmes que simplesmente o deixa transbordar. Aqui há um rush, onde tudo parece muito desesperado e clichê.

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.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Sinister is an average horror film for the most part that isn't very scary. The jump scares are pretty poorly done, and at times it feels a bit silly and cliche. But, I am a fan of how dark the actual story is, and how a decent bit of the murders is actually shown in the rolls of film that are found by Ethan Hawke's character. Take out the silly jump scares and the demon children running around the house in the second half of the runtime, and it's a pretty solid horror movie.

It has its original ideas, and it does manage to freak you out. Although it does have a few jump scares, the tension leading to the shock is very effective. And yes, this film had the living **** scared out of me.

When I watched this movie I had few expectations about it, but I ended up being satisfied with what I saw. The story revolves around a true-crime writer who, inadvertently, stumbles on a bunch of old movies with macabre scenes of murder. But if you're expecting gore and litres of blood, forget it. What is more frightening in the film is precisely what the cameras don't show but know how to suggest. The crime scenes are truly remarkable, and they were done cleverly in a long-disused (Super 8) video film that was cleverly honoured. The film is getting more and more intense, as events occur that reveal the true nature of the killer. The ending is at least unexpected. The soundtrack accompanies every moment with great discretion, managing to avoid imposing itself on the action of the film. Scott Derrickson, the director / writer, deserves the laurels, as does Ethan Hawke, who brings the lead actor to life.

Scott Derrickson's "Sinister" is a very suspenseful horror flick with a great atmosphere, interesting characters, and a mysterious villain, who will undoubtedly keep the weak-spirited up at night

Original ideas in horror are hard to come by given the nature of the genre. The fans all want to be scared, some want blood and gore, and do we ever really want to see a happy ending? The idea behind Sinster was simple, lets give fans a little bit of everything and see how they react. Seeking peace and solitude, real crime writer, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), moves his family to the country, unaware that the house he's living in has a checkered past. That is until he finds an old movie projector with 8mm films, that will horrify the man to his core. Having children as the perpetrators of these crimes was my favorite part of the film, I love it when horror movies do that, because what could be scarier than an evil child. You take the most innocent thing in the world, turn it evil, and once that happens what can you do about it? Would you be able to shoot a kid? So how do you stop them? The idea is bone chilling. I also liked the fact that they touch on every aspect of the genre they could from ghosts to possession, from gore to jump scares, they really did include a lot. The problem however is that the film focuses on Ethan Hawke, who tries to shield his family from what's happening, while investigating the events on his own, and this makes the time in between events move at a snails pace. With so much going for it, this is a movie that should have a lot going on, not long periods of nothingness. Personally I'd like to see the story focus on a child and watch as he/she transforms into one of the kids in the 8mm films, that would be cool. For what it's worth, this wasn't a bad film, the cast was pretty good, and they did a lot with what they had, but ultimately Sinister just moved a little too slowly for me.

Deutsche Review - Kritik Der folgende Test ist in 5 Kategorien zusammengefasst. Diese 5 Kartegorien ergeben die Gesamtpunktzahl von 0 - 100 Punkten. Um einen passenden Userscore zu geben wird auf oder abgerundet. Bei 84 Punkten ergibt das einen User Score von 8. Bei 86 einen von Userscore von 9. Falls eine 85 kommt entscheide ich ob ich es eher positiv oder negativ nehme. Regeln verstanden? Dann sind hier meine Punkte. Story = 18/20 Figuren = 16/20 Sound = 20/20 Bild/ Set = 10/20 Länge = 19/20 Mein persölicher Score = 83/100 Mein User Score = 8/10 Lohnenswert? = JA! Fortsetzung erwünscht? = Gerne.

Horror is the only genre in which I NEVER trust or care what the critics say. Honestly, I do not know what pleases them. "Sinister" was so scary that I had to pause it a couple times and watch some Teletubbie videos from Youtube to calm down.

Sinister is one of my all time favorite horror movies, with Cabin in the woods and Insidious. A pagan deity from Babylonian times named Bagul, otherwise known as the eater/devourer of children and the corruption of innocence, luring or tricking them to watch snuff movies of other children he has lured to slaughter their entire families while filming the ordeal as a sort of cult initiation, trapping them in his own nether world to consume their souls begins to terrorize a new family that has settled into the house of the previous families murder, after true crime novelist protagonist finds the old tape reels of the previous murders of other families, putting his family in danger.

The budget must have been minuscule, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But you soon realize that the story moves so slowly because they needed to fill 1 hour, 45 minutes. No masterpiece here.

Something wicked comes creaking along the floorboards in “Sinister” before racing prematurely out the door. Ethan Hawke plays a true-crime author who, when this creepy horror flick opens, is moving his family into a house where another family was slaughtered. He’s investigating the murders for his next book and tells his wife it’s the only house they can afford. The tree from which members of the other family were hanged — a scene that the director Scott Derrickson, who shows it several times, is clearly proud of — looms in a picture window like an omen. A twitchy Mr. Hawke builds a persuasive portrait of desperation with little help from the script and despite playing a character who makes so many mistakes he might as well be on a suicide mission. Mr. Derrickson, keeping the lights dimmed, effectively puts his pieces into play, even if their familiarity — a man struggling with his art, his foolishly supportive wife, children in peril, possible evil — brings to mind superior entertainments like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Shining.” Mr. Derrickson’s cleverest detail is the box of Super-8 home movies that turn out to be diabolical mementos and which suggest that film, even when it’s small gauge, is one awesomely powerful medium.

Ethan Hawke stars as a crime novelist obsessed with a missing-girl case in Scott Derrickson's latest scary movie. A true-crime author stumbles onto something beyond his beat in Scott Derrickson's Sinister, which follows Ethan Hawke's Ellison Oswalt as he grows increasingly obsessed with a missing-girl case he hopes will lead to a bestselling book. Occasionally stupid (stretching even fright-flick conventions) but scary nonetheless, the pic should please horror fans. When Oswalt's wife (Juliet Rylance), just uprooted to a new town (so he can investigate the new story) and already getting bad vibes from neighbors, asks "We didn't move a few doors down from a crime scene again, did we?," he assures her they didn't. She asked the wrong question: Oswalt has bought the very house in which four members of a family were slain, with the fifth abducted. An ornery sheriff (Fred Thompson) stops by before the boxes are even unloaded to warn the author he's not a fan of his books, and doesn't cotton to a fame-hungry scribbler second-guessing his department's work. Local lawmen are soon the least of Oswalt's worries. He finds a box of Super-8 films in the attic, each showing a family being murdered in a uniquely grisly way. Believing he's stumbled across his own In Cold Blood, he stays up nights scrutinizing the films and looking for connections between killings whose locations and victims are still unknown. Derrickson borrows the vibe of Joel Schumacher's 8MM as Hawke, swigging whiskey and giving the crease between his eyebrows a workout, struggles with the horrible things he's seeing. But the film soon shifts into bump-in-the-night mode, with an unseen visitor leaving clues for Oswalt in his own house and taunting him with increasingly unsettling (and harder to explain) stunts. Setting aside Oswalt's infuriating unwillingness to turn on the lights when homicidal intruders infiltrate his home at midnight, the movie has him doing some pretty unjustifiably dumb things -- like walking with a butcher knife thrust in front of him when he has every reason to think his sleepwalking young son might suddenly leap out at him. We allow him some of this, thanks to the picture's coy suggestions that Oswalt might be going a little nuts due to the nature of his investigation. But Derrickson and co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill are eager to draw in more familiar supernatural elements -- an occultologist (Vincent D'Onofrio) identifies a crime-scene marking as a pagan symbol "dating back to Babylonian times" -- and the movie's proceduralist pleasure takes a backseat to ghosts and a mysterious figure known as "Mr. Boogie." The scares are effective throughout, helped a good deal by Christopher Young's glitchy electronic score. While the end clearly points toward a possible franchise, though, many of the ingredients that make Sinister compelling wouldn't make sense a second time around. Some of them barely hold up for the first. Enjoyably edgy fright flick meshes serial-killer and haunted house ingredients.

Brilliant acting from Ethan Hawke and creepy story will make you dream nightmares for sure! With few boring and weak scenes, overall this is a great movie for all horror lovers!

This was a truly creepy horror film. I wish it was a little scarier, but Scott & Blumhouse knew what they were doing with this film. I was super pumped about the sequel, and I loved this movie, despite wanting more scares. However, it's worth watching and owning, and you should watch it

Probably my favorite horror movie after The babadook, Sinister is an utterly creepy movie with an unsettling and eerie feeling throughout the whole film.

This one has jump scares, but good jump scares. Too often, bad horror films will rely on jump scares that startle more than they do scare. However, in Sinister, it does a fantastic job crafting an eerie and fully unsettling atmosphere thanks to a great back story, mysterious happenings, and the phenomenal score (did I mention the score?). Sinister is successful because it does not rely on these scares, rather it is the atmosphere that keeps you on edge and thrills you throughout. Ethan Hawke and the rest of the cast do a good job, but really, this shows director Scott Derrickson truly does have talent. With this atmospheric and creepy horror film, any claims to the opposite can be disregarded. A truly haunting experience, Sinister works well not only as a horror film, but as a crime film with a truly captivating story behind it that you try and piece together along with Hawke. If this film does not scare you, I truly envy you, because I was petrified from the very beginning.

Sinister is a decent midrange flick with a decent, somewhat washed up storyline and antagonist. The film only contains a handful of jumpscares, but they're pretty effective.

The constant red herrings and cliche plot points prevent me from giving this film a 7 or 8. The film could have been a lot better, but it isn't a bad film by any means.

Sinister is a very good horror film that uses scary imagery and heart wrenching suspense to scare the audience despite having a relatively familiar plot and characters.

Reviewing this for comparison against Sinister 2. Sinister had some good acting talent behind it with Ethan Hawke as the tortured protagonist of the film. The film is a little too reliant on jumpscares but it still has its creepy moments. First viewing I thought the film was rather well done but on second I saw it as a reasonable effort but nothing too special. The main villain has a creepy design, but some jump scares in this film are just too cheap. I give this a 6.5/10, but will keep it at a 6/10 on metacritics score.

Every Ethan Hawke movie I seen he dies. The purge. But sinister he dies too. I loved the movie it made me try to guess and it did not let me and I paid the price by the scares and mystery.

I gave this movie a ten as it is the first horror movie to make the get up out of my seat and say no and begin to walk out, this movie terrified me so much, my friend had to drag my arse back down so I didn't leave the cinema and it was the lawn mower scene that did that, this film was original, scary and very unsettling, the OST was the greatest horror OST ever created, it managed to terrify me at every single scene, Sinister is my favorite horror of all time and will remain like that for a long time to come

This movie was one of the best horror movies that I have ever seen and I think that's because it is a good blend of a few other genres of film but on top of it all its really scary. I found myself very scared throughout this movie which is kind of a rarity for me unless I'm watching one of the classic horror films. I love the crime aspect of this movie, I think every human being secret loves a good serial killer film because we are so mesmerised with how their brains work. This film has a few twists along the way and really does leave you guessing until the very end. Ethan Hawke was amazing in this film as well. This guy could be the horror king if he wanted to, I'd like to see him in more films like this. If you are a horror fan please watch Sinister.

One of the very few modern horror films that manages to be chilling, thrilling, frightening, and disturbing. Great acting and a clever premise are just the icing on the cake.

Someone finally figured out a way to make the concept of "found footage" interesting, and it's by incorporating it into the film's overall scope rather than employing it as the governing factor. Sinister is an intense horror film that starts out masquerading as something more mundane. It's hair-raising and gripping, although some of its narrative turns require a significant level of "suspension of disbelief." In true horror movie tradition, characters do things that are head-scratchingly dumb. Once you accept those logic-defying moments, the movie works with diabolical effectiveness. And, even though the ending is inescapable (and therefore predictable), that does little to diminish its effectiveness. Sinister opens with a disturbing scene: a Super-8 "home movie" that shows the hanging deaths of four people. As the narrative progresses, we learn that this is one of several amateur snuff films in existence. There's one of a family burning to death in a car, one of a multiple drowning, one where victims have their throats slit, and a particularly nasty one in which the murder weapon is a lawn mower. During the course of Sinister's running, we see all (or almost all) of these Super 8 movies; the rest of the film is presented using traditional, 3rd-person cinematography (non-shaky cam variety). One element that makes the "found footage" approach work uncommonly well in Sinister is that it doesn’t hijack the style. There's no lingering question about why someone is always filming. For about the first 30 minutes, Sinister unfolds more like a mystery/thriller than a horror excusrion as Ellison's investigation points toward the possible involvement of a serial killer. Then unexplained things begin to happen: loud noises in the attic, a film projector starting on its own, and a demonic face moving in a supposedly "still" photograph on a computer screen. Sinister features its share of effective "boo!" moments. The makeup for the mysterious figure is well-done. It's genuinely unsettling and doesn't feel like a re-harsh of any of the horror movie icons. Also, because it's shown only fleetingly, it never loses its power to disturb as a result of overexposure. Director Scott Derrickson (whose resume includes the first-person horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose as well as the big-budget remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still) develops an atmosphere that emphasizes isolation and claustrophobia. Aside from a friendly local deputy (James Ransone), Ellison has no one beyond his immediate family to turn to for support. There's no generic best friend or brother. The suspense builds in tandem with a burgeoning sense of doom. It's a slow-burn approach that may not work on those infected with a need for brash, fast-paced gore-fests. Sinister is plenty grisly, but some of the bloodiest instances are left to the viewer's imagination. In developing Sinister, director Derrickson and his co-writer, C. Robert Cargill, display an unerring understanding of what will unsettle viewers in a darkened auditorium. They borrow liberally from earlier horror efforts, with The Shining being the most obvious influence. Derrickson's use of sound is particularly important. The bumps in the night are loud enough to cause viewers to jump in their seats and Christopher Young's discordant score is perfect for the material. It has been a long time since there has been a genuinely creepy horror movie available to audiences in search **** Halloween scare; Sinister provides that missing October ingredient.

This is more of a drama than a horror **** the movie still has some effective "scary" **** movie is kind of slow and the horror is present in the end but,the movie is pretty entertaining and Ethan Hawke is really good.