[Film] Sinister

[PizzaSHARK]

Horror flick released a few days ago. It's about a true-crime novelist researching a kidnapping-murder in a small PA town; he and his family move to a house in the area, where he discovers a box of Super 8 home movies in the attic, and things go wonky from there.

Respectable movie, was worth the $5 matinee I went to see it during. Currently has a 63% fresh rating on RT from crits, and about 3.7/5 for users. Directed by the same guy that directed Paranormal Activity.

Unfortunately, it also has the same things that serve to break immersion and otherwise make you go "oh, please," commonly seen in horror flicks. The protagonist is almost criminally stupid, the monsters are seen far too clearly and too often (and, ironically despite that, it's hard to determine who "the monster" even [i]is[/i]), and the flick seemed to be a little too reliant on tropes like the jump scare and "false calmness" thing.

Multiple points there are thumping noises from the house and the protagonist walks around in the dark, instead of turning on the lights. When it becomes obvious shit's going down up in the attic, he just wanders up there unprepared. Me? I'd fucking wait until morning, everyone knows monsters are vanquished by about 7 AM.

We're supposed to believe this pagan deity (read: demon) is the major enemy of the series, but he's almost completely absent from the film except for like the last twenty minutes, and even then he's basically just occasionally showing up to be "spooky," and not really doing anything. The kids were kind of spooky the first time they appeared, but after that I wasn't creeped out by them, I was going "aww, that little girl looks like she's having fun doing this!" in reference to the actual filming, not events inside the story.

The whole "picture moves when the character isn't looking," bit, the "character holds up picture, moves it away, and monster appears," bit, and the completely asinine MONSTER FACE SHOWS UP RIGHT BEFORE CUT TO BLACK bits were just stupid and didn't add anything to the flick.

It seems like the director wasn't sure if he wanted the story to be taken seriously or not because there's like an even split between tense, serious scenes and what came off to me (and the others in the theater, judging by laughing) as lighthearted dark comedy scenes, which makes the whole thing feel a little schizophrenic.

Still, it's an example of a relatively competent horror movie, and furthermore shows that you can have a horror flick with relatively little gore. I mean, yeah, we see terrible things happen to the families in the home movies, but it's largely without excessive gore.

I did have to wonder how the little girl (who I also swear to god looks like Bonnie Wright did when she was about that age, in the first Harry Potter flicks) not only managed to move her dad and mom (who probably outweigh her by at least 100 pounds) around and then chop them up with the axe. Also, if she butchered her mom and dad in the living room, where did all the blood in the upstairs hallway come from, and how did it spatter like that? We're never shown where she kills her brother, but it was probably in his room. So, again... hallway? How?

And where did she get the drug to put her dad (and, presumably mom and brother) to sleep? Why was her dad foaming at the mouth as if he were poisoned? Typical bad-horror-movie logic.

[Deleted]

Here is a thread on the first page handling that movie already

[PizzaSHARK]

Here is a thread on the first page handling that movie already

Well now I just feel stupid. Surprised I missed it!