Sinister (film)

Sinister
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Scott Derrickson
Written by	C. Robert Cargill Scott Derrickson
Produced by	Jason Blum Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
Starring	Ethan Hawke Juliet Rylance Fred Thompson James Ransone Clare Foley Michael Hall D'Addario
Cinematography	Christopher Norr
Edited by	Frédéric Thoraval
Music by	Christopher Young
Production companies	Summit Entertainment Alliance Films Automatik Entertainment Blumhouse Productions IM Global Alliance Films UK Limited
Distributed by	Lionsgate (through Summit Entertainment) (United States)[1] Alliance Motion Picture Distribution (Canada) Momentum Pictures (United Kingdom)
Release dates	March 11, 2012 (2012-03-11) (SXSW) October 12, 2012 (2012-10-12) (United States)
Running time	109 minutes[2]
Countries	United Kingdom United States Canada[3]
Language	English
Budget	$3 million[4]
Box office	$87.7 million[5]

Sinister is a 2012 American supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson, and written by C. Robert Cargill and Derrickson. It stars Ethan Hawke as a struggling true-crime writer whose discovery of snuff films depicting gruesome murders and strange supernatural elements in his new house puts his family in danger. Juliet Rylance, Fred Thompson, James Ransone, Clare Foley, Michael Hall D'Addario, and Vincent D'Onofrio appear in supporting roles.

Sinister was inspired by a nightmare Cargill had after watching the 2002 film The Ring.^[6] Principal photography on Sinister began in Autumn of 2011 on Long Island, New York with a production budget of $3 million.^[4] To add to the authenticity of old home movies and snuff films, the Super 8 segments were shot on actual Super 8 cameras and film stock.^[7] The film was a co-production between the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

It premiered at the SXSW festival on March 10, 2012.^[8] It was released in the United Kingdom on October 5, 2012, and in the United States on October 12. Critics praised its acting, direction, cinematography and atmosphere, but criticised its use of jump scares and other horror clichés. It was a box office success, grossing $87.7 million against its budget of $3 million.^[5] The resulting financial success led to a sequel, released in 2015.

It has since developed a reputation for scariness and is considered a cult classic. A 2020 study by Broadband Choices named Sinister the scariest film ever made, based on an analysis of viewer heart rates.^[9]

True crime writer Ellison Oswalt moves into a home in the town of Chatford, Pennsylvania, with his wife Tracy, their son Trevor, and daughter Ashley. Ellison's first book was wildly successful when he discovered new evidence which led to the capture of the perpetrator, but his subsequent works were flops, leaving the family in a precarious financial position. Unbeknownst to his wife and children, their new home is the site of the gruesome murder by hanging of the previous owners, the Stevenson family. Ellison's new project is about the family's murders and the disappearance of the youngest child, 10-year-old Stephanie Stevenson.

In the attic, Ellison finds a box containing a scorpion, a projector and reels of Super 8 film labeled as home movies. The films are footage of different families being murdered in various ways: drowned in a pool (Pool Party '66), burned to death in a car (BBQ '79), run over by a lawn mower (Lawn Work '86), having their throats slit in their beds (Sleepy Time '98), and the hanging of the Stevensons (Family Hanging Out '11). The killings seem to be done by the camera operator. Ellison is torn between turning the videos over to the police and the tantalizing realization that he may have uncovered the heretofore unknown existence of a serial killer and what that would mean for his new book.

Ellison decides to keep the films secret and begins to study them, with noted negative impacts on his psyche from the gruesome footage. Ellison notices a mysterious cultic symbol and a strange, eerie figure in the films. Ellison matches one of the reels to the killing of the Millers and the disappearance of 13-year-old Christopher Miller in 1998. One night, Ellison investigates noises in the attic. Inside the film reels' canister lid, he finds a king snake and childlike doodles of the killings, with a figure called "Mr. Boogie" also present. At one point, Ellison encounters a Rottweiler in the back garden.

Consulting a local deputy, Ellison learns that the murders took place in different cities across the country and at different times dating back to 1966. Following every murder, a child from each family disappeared. Before the Stevensons moved to Chatford, they lived in the Millers' former house. Ellison consults occult specialist Professor Jonas about the symbol seen in the films. Jonas links it to pagan Babylonian god Bughuul, who is an "eater of children." Folktales of Bughuul involve the deity tricking or luring the children away from safety so that they become trapped in his realm and consumed. Jonas suspects the murders are part of a cult initiation rite, rather than the work of a single murderer.

Ghost children invisible to Ellison haunt the house, tormenting him, with one appearing in Ashley's bedroom. Ashley later paints this girl, whom she identifies as Stephanie Stevenson. Another night, Ellison finds the missing children in the attic, watching one of the films. Bughuul appears on camera before physically appearing before Ellison. Horrified, Ellison destroys the camera, projector, and film reels, and moves the family back to their old home.

Jonas sends Ellison historical images associated with Bughuul, including the mysterious symbol and three symbolic creatures Ellison encountered at the Stevenson house: a scorpion, a snake, and a dog. Early Christians believed that images of Bughuul served as a gateway for him to come into the mortal world and possess children who see these images. Ellison discovers the projector in his attic, along with a new reel labeled "Extended Cut Endings".

Using information from Jonas as well as the deputy, whose several calls Ellison earlier dismissed, Ellison figured out the pattern for the murders. After the previous family is murdered, the next family who moved in is marked as the victims. However they were killed only after they fled from the haunted place to somewhere else - the hauntings were there to provide incentives. By fleeing the Stevenson house, Ellison has doomed his family. The "Extended Cut" depicts the missing children coming onscreen following each murder, revealing themselves to be the culprit influenced by Bughuul - "Mr. Boogie."

Feeling lightheaded, Ellison notices a green residue in his mug, and a good-night note from Ashley, before losing consciousness. He awakes to find himself, Tracy, and Trevor bound and gagged. The possessed Ashley approaches them with the 8 mm camera. Quipping she will make Ellison "famous again," Ashley proceeds to dismember her family with an axe. She then uses their blood to paint childish pictures along with Bughuul's symbol on the walls. She finishes by doodling the dismembered corpses on the lid of the film reel box as the film of her murders shows on the projector. Eventually Bughuul appears, claims Ashley and walks into the film with her.

The box of films is shown sitting in the Oswalt family's attic, now accompanied by Ashley's reel titled House Painting '12, before Bughuul suddenly appears.

• Ethan Hawke as Ellison Oswalt
• Juliet Rylance as Tracy Oswalt
• Fred Thompson as Sheriff
• James Ransone as Deputy
• Michael Hall D'Addario as Trevor Oswalt
• Clare Foley as Ashley Oswalt
• Vincent D'Onofrio as Professor Jonas (uncredited appearance)
• Nicholas King as Bughuul/Mr. Boogie
• Victoria Leigh as Stephanie
• Danielle Kotch as Lawn Girl
• Cameron Ocasio as BBQ Boy
• Ethan Haberfield as Pool Party Boy
• Blake Mizrahi as Sleepy Time Boy

Writer C. Robert Cargill says that his inspiration for Sinister came from a nightmare he experienced after seeing the 2002 horror film The Ring, in which he discovered a film in his attic depicting the hanging of an entire family. This scenario became the setup for the plot of Sinister.^[10] In creating a villain for the film, Cargill conceptualized a new take on the Bogeyman, calling the entity "Mr. Boogie". Cargill's idea was that the creature would be both terrifying and seductive to children, luring them to their dooms as a sinister Willy Wonka-like figure.^[11]

Cargill and co-writer Scott Derrickson ultimately decided to downplay the creature's alluring nature, only intimating how it manipulates the children into murder. In further developing Mr. Boogie, the pair had lengthy discussions about its nature, deciding not to make it a demon but rather a Pagan deity, in order to place it outside the conceptual scope of any one particular religion. Consequently, the villain was given the proper name "Bughuul", with only the child characters in the film referring to it as "Mr. Boogie".^[11][12]

In crafting a look for Bughuul, Cargill initially kept to the idea of a sinister Willy Wonka before realizing that audiences might find it "silly" and kill the potential for the film becoming a series. Looking for inspiration, Derrickson typed the word "horror" into flickr and searched through 500,000 images. He narrowed the images down to 15, including a photograph of a ghoul which was tagged simply "Natalie". Cargill was particularly struck by "Natalie" and decided: "What if it's just this guy?". He and Derrickson contacted the photographer and purchased the rights to use the image for $500. Derrickson explained that the image appealed to him because it reminded him of the makeup and costumes worn by performers in black metal, while remaining unique enough so as not to be directly linked to the genre; Derrickson had previously researched black metal while looking for inspiration for Bughuul's symbol, which is ritualistically painted at the scene of each of the film's murder sequences.^[11][12] Some of the background music for these murder sequences was taken from ambient tracks by bands associated with the Norwegian black metal scene, including Ulver and Aghast.^[13]

Principal photography for Sinister began in autumn of 2011, after Ethan Hawke and Juliet Rylance signed on to star in the film.^[14] The Super 8 segments were shot first, using actual Super 8 cameras and film stock, in order to maintain the aesthetic authenticity of home-shot Super 8 footage.^[7] Principal photography took place on Long Island. In an interview with Bleeding Cool, screenwriter Cargill admitted that Hawke's character got his name (Ellison Oswalt) from writer Harlan Ellison and comedian/writer Patton Oswalt.^[15] Cargill keeps books by both men on his shelves.

First revealed at the SXSW festival in the United States, Sinister premiered in the United Kingdom at the London FrightFest and in Spain at the Sitges Film Festival.^[16][17]

Sinister has an approval rating of 63% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 154 reviews, with an average rating of 6.20/10.^[18] The critical consensus states "Its plot hinges on typically implausible horror-movie behavior and recycles countless genre cliches, but Sinister delivers a surprising number of fresh, diabolical twists."^[18] The film also has a score of 53 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[19]

Variety praised the film as "the sort of tale that would paralyze kids' psyches".^[20] Film.com stated that Sinister was a "deeply frightening horror film that takes its obligation to alarm very seriously".^[21] Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars, criticizing a few obvious horror tropes but praising Hawke's performance and calling it "an undeniably scary movie."^[22] Peter Paras of E! named it the best horror film of 2012, citing the film's soundtrack and subversion of contemporary horror tropes.^[23]

CraveOnline called the film "solid" but remarked that the film "doesn't quite go to the next level that gets me like an Insidious",^[24] and IGN praised the film's story while criticizing some of Sinister's "scream-out-loud moments" as lazy.^[25]

Reviewer Garry McConnachie of Scotland's Daily Record rated the film four of five stars, saying, "This is how Hollywood horror should be done... Sinister covers all its bases with aplomb."^[26]

Ryan Lambie of Den of Geek gave the film three out of five stars, and wrote that despite its faults, "there's something undeniably powerful about Sinister. Hawke's performance holds the screen through its more hackneyed moments, and it's the scenes where it's just him, a projector, and a few feet of hideous 8 mm footage where the movie truly convinces. And while its scares are frequently cheap, it's also difficult to deny that Sinister sometimes manages to inspire moments of palpable dread."^[27]

Some reviewers have criticized the film's preoccupation with outdated technology. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star (who gave the film two out of four stars) argues that the movie tries for "old school shocks" but "can't afford a pre-Internet setting."^[28] Rafer Guzman of Newsday wrote that "celluloid is such a warm, friendly old format that it seems unlikely to contain the spirit of, say, a child-eating demon."^[29] Academic study of the film, however, tends to view Sinister's representation of both old and new media formats as a study in transmediation.^[30]

A 2020 study conducted by Broadband Choices named Sinister the scariest movie ever made. The study sampled 50 of the highest-rated horror movies ever made based on reception on sites like IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Reddit, and then measured study participants' heart rates while watching the sampled films. The average resting heart beat of the study participants was 65 beats per minute (BPM) but jumped to an average 86 BPM while watching the film, an increase of 32% and the highest among all of the sampled films.^[31][32]

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on February 11, 2013, in the UK and February 19, 2013, in the US^[33] with two commentaries (one with director Scott Derrickson and another with writer C. Robert Cargill). The release also included two new features (True Crime Criminals and Living in a House of Death) as well as a featurette on the Sinister Fear Experiment performed by Thrill Laboratory in celebration of the film's theatrical release.

A sequel was announced to be in the works in March 2013, with Derrickson in talks to co-write the script with Cargill, but not to direct.^[34] On April 17, 2014, it was announced that Ciaran Foy would direct the film, and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Charles Layton, Xavier Marchand and Patrice Théroux would executive produce the sequel with eOne Entertainment.^[35] The film was released on August 21, 2015.^[36]

• Sinister at IMDb
• Sinister at Box Office Mojo
• Sinister at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sinister at Metacritic