Sinister Is Diabolically Good, If Not Just a BIT Predictable
“Sinister was scientifically the scariest movie ever made…”
Rating: 3.5 Cocktails 🍸🍸🍸½
A masterclass in slow-burn supernatural horror that gets under your skin and stays there. Essential viewing for anyone who thinks modern horror can’t compete with the classics.
What happens when ambition blinds you to danger? When the desperate need for success makes you drag your family into a nightmare? Scott Derrickson’s Sinister understands that the scariest monsters aren’t always supernatural. Sometimes they’re the demons of ego and obsession that lead us to make catastrophic choices. And then, of course, there’s the actual demon.
The Premise
Ellison Oswalt is a true-crime writer whose glory days are far behind him. His first book was a sensation where he uncovered new evidence that caught a killer and became a household name. But that was years ago, and every book since has flopped harder than the last. His family is barely scraping by, his wife Tracy is growing increasingly resentful of his career choices, and his young son Trevor is plagued by night terrors.
Desperate for another hit, Ellison moves his family to King County, Pennsylvania, into a house where a brutal crime occurred: a family of four was hanged from a tree in the backyard, and their 10-year-old daughter vanished without a trace. What Ellison doesn’t tell his wife is that they’re not just moving near the crime scene. They’re moving into it. This is the actual house where it happened.
In the attic, Ellison discovers a box containing a Super 8 projector and several reels of film, each innocuously labeled like home movies: “Pool Party ’66,” “BBQ ’79,” “Sleepy Time ’98.” Curious, he threads the first reel and watches. What unfolds isn’t a family barbecue: it’s a family being burned alive. Each reel contains footage of different families being murdered in increasingly disturbing ways, filmed from the killer’s perspective.
As Ellison becomes obsessed with the footage, analyzing each frame for clues, strange things begin happening in the house. Footsteps in the attic. The projector turning on by itself. And in each grainy film, lurking in the background, there’s a pale, gaunt figure and face with dark eyes. Someone, or something, has been documenting these murders for decades. And now that Ellison has watched them, it’s watching him back.
The Director’s Nightmare Fuel
Before Sinister, Scott Derrickson had already made waves with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, proving he understood how to blend supernatural horror with emotional depth. But Sinister would become his masterpiece, and a turning point in modern horror. Derrickson, who studied theology alongside film at Biola University, brings a philosophical weight to his horror films, exploring themes of good versus evil in ways that feel genuinely unsettling rather than preachy.
The film was co-written with C. Robert Cargill, who conceived the story after having nightmares following a screening of The Ring. That nightmare logic permeates every frame of Sinister. The uncanny feeling that something is fundamentally wrong, the creeping dread that builds long before anything overtly terrifying appears.
Why It Works
Sinister succeeds because it operates on multiple levels of horror. There’s the surface-level scares: those Super 8 films are genuinely disturbing, shot on actual vintage cameras to capture that degraded, home-movie quality that makes them feel sickeningly real. Derrickson wisely shows just enough to horrify without becoming gratuitous, letting our imaginations fill in the worst details.
But beneath that is the more insidious horror of watching a man destroy his family through hubris. Ethan Hawke delivers one of his finest performances as Ellison, a man so consumed by the need to reclaim his former glory that he willfully ignores every warning sign. His wife begs him to stop. The local deputy warns him off. Even Ellison himself knows, on some level, that he should walk away. But he can’t. The story is too good. The book will be too big.
The film’s atmosphere is suffocating. Cinematographer Christopher Norr keeps most of the film shrouded in darkness, with Ellison frequently working by lamplight, the shadows pressing in around him. When those Super 8 films project on the wall, they illuminate the room in flickering, ghostly light – vintage Kodachrome colors that should feel nostalgic but instead feel corrupted, wrong.
And then there’s Bughuul, the demon at the center of it all. Unlike so many modern horror villains that are over-explained, Bughuul remains mysterious and terrifying. His design is simple but effective: a pale, corpse-like face with hollow eyes and a disturbing grin. He doesn’t need an elaborate backstory to be frightening. His presence is enough.
Another One of Those Inexpensive Hits
Made for just $3 million, Sinister became a massive hit, grossing $87.7 million worldwide. But its impact went far beyond the box office. In 2020, a study by Broadband Choices monitored viewers’ heart rates during horror films and determined that Sinister was scientifically the scariest movie ever made. Audience members experienced a 34% increase in heart rate while watching; from an average resting rate of 65 beats per minute to 86 during the film, with spikes hitting 131 during the film’s jump scares.
The study’s methodology combined both heart rate and heart rate variance (measuring stress and dread), giving Sinistera “Scare Score” of 96 out of 100. It beat out modern classics like Insidious, The Conjuring, and Hereditary for the top spot. Roger Ebert praised the film, calling it “an undeniably scary movie” and highlighting Hawke’s captivating performance, even while noting some predictable horror tropes.
Derrickson’s Horror Legacy
Sinister‘s success cemented Derrickson as a master of modern horror. He went on to direct Deliver Us from Evil (2014) before making the leap to Marvel with Doctor Strange (2016), which grossed nearly $678 million worldwide. Though he stepped away from directing the sequel due to creative differences, he remained as executive producer.
But it was a return to horror that truly reignited Derrickson’s passion. In 2022, he reunited with Ethan Hawke and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill for The Black Phone, an adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story that Derrickson called deeply personal growing out of three years of therapy and exploring the traumatic nature of his own childhood. The film was both a critical and commercial success, winning multiple Saturn Awards and proving that Derrickson’s horror instincts remain as sharp as ever.
Most recently, Derrickson directed The Gorge for Skydance Media and Apple TV+, a genre-blending film he describes as mixing “five or six different genres” into an audacious, original vision. For a director who could easily rest on his laurels, Derrickson continues to push boundaries and take creative risks.
The Verdict
Sinister isn’t perfect. Some critics rightfully note its reliance on jump scares and a few predictable horror beats. The ending, while dark and unflinching, may feel inevitable once you understand the pattern. But what Derrickson and Cargill achieved here is undeniable, a horror film that works on both visceral and psychological levels, one that understands the power of atmosphere and dread as much as shock.
The Super 8 footage alone would be enough to haunt your dreams, but it’s the larger tragedy of watching a man damn his family through pride, that gives the film its weight. Hawke commits fully to the role, making Ellison’s descent feel authentic and tragic rather than frustrating.
Is it really the scariest movie ever made? Science says yes, at least by one metric. But more importantly, it’s a damn good horror film that respects its audience’s intelligence while still delivering genuine scares. In an era of lazy jump-scare horror, Sinister proved that atmospheric dread, strong performances, and a genuinely creepy villain could still terrify audiences.
Pair it with The Graveyard Daiquiri
