Sinister

A scaled back horror movie from the director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and (shudder) The Day the Earth Stood Still, the concept here is a familiar one but the execution admirably low-key. Not a million miles away from the slightly more schlocky (and better) Insidious, it at least attempts to engage properly before amping up the tension. Hawke's crime writer is about as likeable as a Serbian war criminal, though.

Opening with a shot of a family being slowly hung from a tree, the very next scene is Hawke's writer, his ridiculously understanding missus and their two kids moving into the same gaff. We soon learn that Hawke's character is a crime writer who has previously pissed off the local fuzz in his investigative books. See, he writes about murders and isn't always nice about how the police handled the cases he's profiling. He also failed to mention to the aforementioned other half that the house he's shifted his family to is a crime scene. As he researches and works away on his book, things start going bump in the night.

Comparisons to recent horror movies are pretty much a given; where Insidious shone was its first hour of sporadic chills breaking up the unbearable tension. Sinister is more about the impending sense of dread than momentarily putting the shits up you. Derrickson spends a long time setting his main character up, and it takes a long time for anything really worthwhile to actually happen. There's a lot resting here on the creepy super 8 footage that plays throughout and there are definite pangs of The Ring and Paranormal Activity - there's not a whole lot about Sinister that's original. But said footage is - initially at least - downright chilling.

But it does work. Hawke is an unusual choice as a leading man for a genre film such as this, and while his guy is hilariously selfish it's more how ridiculously amiable the wife is that makes him unbearable. The trick with horror flicks is to have some form of empathy for those in peril; that's why no one cares when hot teens are decapitated by hooded fishermen in slasher movies.

Atmospheric and nicely structured, it's a solid entry to the haunted house canon.