Sinister (originally
published on October 15, 2012)
After suffering through the boring crap that was House at the End of the Street a couple
weeks ago, I mentioned in my review that horror should be the easiest film genre
at which to succeed. All you need is something scary. Nothing else is required,
yet so many movies struggle to deliver on this fairly minimal task. Sinister does not have such a problem.
It follows the tried and true formula of haunted house movies that has been
used to death through the years, but that is unavoidable. There are only so
many frightening situations you can put a character into.
In this film, Ethan Hawke stars as a true crime author who
has moved his family into a house where the previous family was hung from a
tree in the backyard. Everyone, that is, except for a little girl who has
disappeared. Guess where she’ll show up again.
While unpacking, Hawke finds a box of old film reels, which
he screens. They each contain footage of various murders, none of which are
related save for the brief appearances of a very sinister-looking figure. This
is when increasingly strange things begin to happen, and the movie becomes the
expected haunted house ride. What I found so refreshing about it, though, is
its pacing.
Writer and director Scott Derrickson lets the story unravel
in a more controlled and satisfying way than most movies of the type. We all
know, more or less, where the traditional “jump scares” are going to be, and
when they do show up, they are no surprise. What’s surprising is how late in
the game they are used. Sinister has
the good common sense to know that jumps may be scary in the moment, but a
disturbing atmosphere is more long-lasting.
The scariest part of the movie is not when the evil being
first shows up, but for how long we are made to wait for it. Any smart
movie-goer knows that the building of tension is scarier than the outcome, and
this movie builds so much tension that the horrors they lead up to are a
relief.
This is the most well-done suspense film of the year, and
fans of the genre would be foolish to miss it. My complaints are minor compared
to the praise. Most of the film takes place in the dark, which is
understandable, but there are many instances where it doesn’t make sense for
the characters to not just turn on the light. It would have saved them a lot of
trauma. Also, the ending, of all things, is anti-climactically hurried, and
much less powerful than it could have been as a result. Regardless, it does
nothing against the impact of the rest of the film.
I admire Derrickson and his good taste in making this
picture. It presents things that should be horrifying as they are and does so
without being cheap or gimmicky and with no exploitation of anything or
anybody. It is an old-fashioned terrifying fun that you will remember far
longer than the other rubbish of this Saw-inspired
generation.
8/10
Horror remakes are a dime a dozen these days. The people who
make such films seem to think that just about everything the genre can do has
been done, so they just keep digging back into the well of “classics” and
bringing them to the screen anew. In this case, Sam Raimi’s influential and
actually good story of teenager carnage has been revamped for today’s teenagers
who have never heard of it. Keep in mind, this is not THE Evil Dead, but merely an Evil
Dead movie done in the same vein. I see it more as a sequel than a remake,
but you can look at it however you please. The same basic idea has been used
here, though done in a different way.
In this movie, several young people go to an abandoned cabin
in the middle of nowhere to help one of them quit her drug abuse. She winds up
getting possessed, though, and all hell literally breaks loose.
How much you enjoy this new Evil Dead will depend entirely upon how much you can handle
explicit violent behavior and how much you are devoted to Raimi’s original
film. I personally have always admired it as the piece of campy grit that it
is, but I welcomed the new ideas of this movie, since a shot by shot remake
would have been beyond pointless. Nobody in this movie is named Ash, there is
no sinister chanting, no swing ominously banging against the house, etc.
I also greatly appreciated its sincerity. The original
film’s two sequels, which I’ve never cared for, turned intentionally idiotic
humor to full blast and made those movies into dark comedies that just weren’t
funny. This new movie is deadly serious and I was thankful for it. In other
words, this Evil Dead was made in the
spirit of the original film, but is its own creature and not simply a checklist
of things fans expect to see. For that, it is actually worth something, but for
horror fans only. Everyone else won’t make it twelve minutes.
Now, then, the biggest misstep this movie makes is in its
slickness. Part of what made the original film so scary was the way it took
advantage of its low budget. Like The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre before it, The
Evil Dead was a claustrophobic nightmare of a movie that used abrasive
camera tricks and oatmeal-filled gore effects that still shock today. This new
movie utilizes very expensive tools and effects, making the movie look very
nice, but not really accessing the chilling atmosphere it needed. This is not a
scary movie. It is a gross one, for sure, and perhaps occasionally startling,
but it is not scary in the slightest.
Still, it can be forgiven for this lack of frights because
it makes up for it with a good dose of originality. Plus, it actually delivers
on its promises, giving viewers exactly what they came to see and doing it with
good timing and flair. This is good horror and average entertainment. Just don’t
miss out on the classic.
7/10
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