Forgetting the rules of horror movies as he sets out to unravel the facts of a series of seemingly linked family murders, true crime author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) moves his family into the house where one of the massacres occurred (he got it for a bargain price, natch) and sets about solving (or is that unleashing?) the mystery. More of a slow-burn horror that's all about steadily ratcheting up the sense of dread as its characters are engulfed by an uncertain evil, "Sinister" falls flat when it detours into the realm of jumpscares and truncated scenes of violence, but is for the most part pretty damn engrossing. It helps that Ethan Hawke is committed to the bit, gamely sipping whiskey as he searches through the mysterious "home movies" that depict the murders and perhaps hold the key to their cause, and even getting in a good scream or two before the movie's muted but eerie ending. This isn't a great film -- or even a particularly original one -- but it does most of what it needs to do (a bit more bloodshed would have been nice!) and does it quite well. Bughuul is a pretty cool antagonist, too.
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