Sinister (2012)This is one of those movies where I thought... I did that review, didn't I? I didn't? Really? I remember seeing Ethan Hawke and thinking him out of place but... really? I remember the hangings, I remember Ethan's character Ellison Oswalt did everything possible that was just plain wrong to his family in the name of his career... are you sure? I looked in my directory, I looked in Google (sometimes my movie reviews can be found there with a key word), I looked in the files where I keep my movie pics but nothing. Really? Was it good? Nope. Was it terrible but disguised as a 'smart horror film'? Yup.
Which is probably why it wasn't even in the list I published of movies I'd seen and had yet to review. Eep. So here goes (and here's a note to show just how forgettable this sucker is - it's April 30, 2014 and I was about to go through this movie to review it again because, yup, I forgot AGAIN that I'd seen it, done that):
First, it's pretty bad when the production film label (BH Productions) is cooler than the movie. I thought it WAS the movie and was disappointed. Meh, get used to disappointment, there's a lot of it. Oh, and worthless fact of the day: Sinister's definition (one of them anyway) is 'left-handed'. Which I am. So. We first see the ole' Super 8 camera showing a family of four being slowly hung by someone unseen sawing through a limb as a counterweight. Interesting that they stand nice and still and just sort of wiggle when they're strung. Nice. 
Then we get to see the doomed family, the Oswalts. Husband, wife, two kids. All doomed 'cause he's moved them into this house knowing damn well what happened there but didn't tell his wife (of course they wouldn't tell the kids, duh). She asks him if the murder he's researching happened down the street to which he could reply in quasi-honesty 'no'. Dumbass. Like nobody's gonna tell her. He thinks he's going to 'solve the mystery' all by his lonesome as to why a family of five who's so nice got whacked (well, four of them did) and what the hell happened to their third kid?
As soon as they show up so do the local police who do the non-police duty of telling him to make like a tree and get the hell out of there. No, seriously - what police force knows who's moving in and out of their town, even if the damned house was a crime scene? This must be another thing we don't have anywhere near I live, kind of like abandoned mental asylums that teenagers can break into to die overnight. The sheriff is well versed about every book Oswalt ever wrote because apparently he has a lot of free time not searching the attics of crime scenes. He says Oswalt's true crime books started off okay but turned to crap and because of the last one a killer went free. He says. We don't know and frankly I'm losing interest already.
So he's desperate for a new book, his wife is... a blank really. His little girl gets to paint on the walls because... umm, because this is the 21st century and kids get to do stuff we never got to do. His boy, the minute they move in starts having trouble. He already had experienced night terrors but they're really bad now. Mom wonders why, dad looks away whistling and shrugging. Dumbass.
Then he finds a box in the attic full of home movies which of course the police never found because in movies, police are dumbasses who never search the entire home of a crime scene - there's always stuff in the attic. Wow. Or was there? He finds a picture of the attic that shows it completely empty... wait. They took a picture of a completely empty attic? Really?
You know what? Just put your brain in a jar to keep it nice and safe and drool your way through the rest of this 'we're going to make things jump out at you 'cause other than that we got nothing' kind of movie.
This is going to go on forever so lets sum up a lot of this crap. Oswalt found all these films and insists on watching them all instead of delivering them to the sheriff's office like you're supposed to. Each film has a different family killed in a different way in a different year with a cutesy little label on it. Dumbass. When he checks stuff out, the families were all drugged, and there was always there's one child missing, never found. Dumbass. Meanwhile his wife's pissed 'cause she found out (told you), his girl is painting pictures of 'Mr. Boogie' on the walls (Wasn't that a Chuck Berry song?) and the boy keeps waking up all over the place except in his bed. Dumbass.
But we have to put a supernatural element into the film because hey, that's what sells tickets to these stupid movies so we find out that there's a nasty symbol in the films that have a pagan origin. Dumbass. Apparently (according to this movie anyway) the Babylonian symbol is for a god named Bughuul (close enough to 'Boogie' I guess) and he... say it with me... SAY IT... killed entire families and took one child with him. Dumbass.
So this 'Boogie' - just a minute please, I'm a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. Bughuul is neither Babylonian nor pagan nor a deity nor a demon. Discuss. Okay I'm better. So this 'Boogie' is sort of a bastard of the ole' bogeyman horror story, right? From Babylonian times? Who decides not to kill anyone until the 1960's and only in America? Well, Mr. Oswalt finally is starting to get the message. He hears the ole' film projector running by itself, he stumbles up there (okay he climbs) and finds the remains of The Mickey Mouse Club (wondered where the hell they went) watching movies and shushing him. He looks at the screen and THERE'S BUGHUUL OR BUGGIE OR BUGGER OR WHATEVER right on the screen, looking at him. Then Beetlejuice... sorry, 'Bughuul' is in the room...
Somewhere in his writer's brain you can probably hear Scooby saying 'Ruh Roh' as he realizes what he's let loose. He grabs all the film, takes it outside and burns it. I'm actually surprised he was smart enough NOT to do it in the attic. Then of course more supernatural blah blah about a demon (Wait a minute, they said deity - you'll have to wait a minute while I look up the demon list - sorry for the wait. Nope.) Another fun fact for the day - the ancient Babylonians ('cause there really are no current ones) believed they were inundated with evil spirits. A good bug zapper might have helped them out.
Ahem. So stupidly relieved, Oswalt goes back into the attic and... say it with me... SAY IT... the box of films is sitting untouched on the floor. But now they have bonus footage. Oh goodie. That's when he sees the children actually committing the murders before disappearing. This isn't as shocking as the film tries to make it. Probably why they needed some pseudo-demon to blame it on and make it supernatural.
One deputy is starstruck by Oswalt and helps him as much as possible, hoping to get a mention in his next book. Dumbass. Oops, sorry, Oswalt calls him 'Deputy So-and-so'. Really. No joke. Believe me, nothing about this was funny. He finds out (NOW they check?) that each family murdered had lived in the house of the previously murdered family. By this time Oswalt had grabbed his family and gotten the puck out of there. But, true to form (and stupid horror movies) that was the worst thing he could have done - the families had been murdered immediately AFTER they had moved from the home of the previous murders. Are you confused yet or just sleepy?
Oswalt is sleepy. He's seen the boogeyman (basically), he's seen the dead kids, now he finally sees the note next to his coffee cup - 'Good Night, Daddy.' I call BS on that one. This little girl knows how to spell AND knows the proper use of commas? That's more than most adults on my Facebook page. He looks in his cup and sees a green liquid. Hmm, something green that makes you sleepy. DAMN YOU NYQUIL! No but really I have no idea what the hell she got a hold of that would be bright green. Mouthwash? Antifreeze? Hmm...
Oswalt, his wife and boy are tied up. His daughter is now running the camera, and he's gonna be famous. They don't outright show it of course (these are small children after all) but she kills them all with an ax. Small kid, huge ax, power enough to chop each of them into three pieces. Uh huh. She uses the 'blood' to paint on the walls 'cause, hey, nobody tells her what to do anymore. When she's done, she watches the film of her work (Since when do kids know how to run cameras and projectors? I thought they just programmed VCR's.) and the end shows the all the previous kids watching their new playmate.
The Boogie, uh, Bughuul appears and all the kids run. It's a little late for that, ain't it? He then lifts Ashley (and he's wearing a pretty snazzy outfit for a Babylonian demon, ain't he?) into his arms and disappears into the film with her. The film concludes with an image of the box of films in the Oswalt family's attic, now accompanied by Ashley's reel, labeled "House Painting '12".
Bughuul appears as a final 'BOO!' before the screen cuts to black. Sorry, I couldn't figure out a nice way to say 'the dumbasses that should have been dead weeks ago finally get snuffed and the psycho painter daughter runs off with the pseudo-demon-deity-pagan-whatever'.
So this 'Boogie' - just a minute please, I'm a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. Bughuul is neither Babylonian nor pagan nor a deity nor a demon. Discuss. Okay I'm better. So this 'Boogie' is sort of a bastard of the ole' bogeyman horror story, right? From Babylonian times? Who decides not to kill anyone until the 1960's and only in America? Well, Mr. Oswalt finally is starting to get the message. He hears the ole' film projector running by itself, he stumbles up there (okay he climbs) and finds the remains of The Mickey Mouse Club (wondered where the hell they went) watching movies and shushing him. He looks at the screen and THERE'S BUGHUUL OR BUGGIE OR BUGGER OR WHATEVER right on the screen, looking at him. Then Beetlejuice... sorry, 'Bughuul' is in the room...Somewhere in his writer's brain you can probably hear Scooby saying 'Ruh Roh' as he realizes what he's let loose. He grabs all the film, takes it outside and burns it. I'm actually surprised he was smart enough NOT to do it in the attic. Then of course more supernatural blah blah about a demon (Wait a minute, they said deity - you'll have to wait a minute while I look up the demon list - sorry for the wait. Nope.) Another fun fact for the day - the ancient Babylonians ('cause there really are no current ones) believed they were inundated with evil spirits. A good bug zapper might have helped them out.
Ahem. So stupidly relieved, Oswalt goes back into the attic and... say it with me... SAY IT... the box of films is sitting untouched on the floor. But now they have bonus footage. Oh goodie. That's when he sees the children actually committing the murders before disappearing. This isn't as shocking as the film tries to make it. Probably why they needed some pseudo-demon to blame it on and make it supernatural.Oswalt is sleepy. He's seen the boogeyman (basically), he's seen the dead kids, now he finally sees the note next to his coffee cup - 'Good Night, Daddy.' I call BS on that one. This little girl knows how to spell AND knows the proper use of commas? That's more than most adults on my Facebook page. He looks in his cup and sees a green liquid. Hmm, something green that makes you sleepy. DAMN YOU NYQUIL! No but really I have no idea what the hell she got a hold of that would be bright green. Mouthwash? Antifreeze? Hmm...
Oswalt, his wife and boy are tied up. His daughter is now running the camera, and he's gonna be famous. They don't outright show it of course (these are small children after all) but she kills them all with an ax. Small kid, huge ax, power enough to chop each of them into three pieces. Uh huh. She uses the 'blood' to paint on the walls 'cause, hey, nobody tells her what to do anymore. When she's done, she watches the film of her work (Since when do kids know how to run cameras and projectors? I thought they just programmed VCR's.) and the end shows the all the previous kids watching their new playmate. The Boogie, uh, Bughuul appears and all the kids run. It's a little late for that, ain't it? He then lifts Ashley (and he's wearing a pretty snazzy outfit for a Babylonian demon, ain't he?) into his arms and disappears into the film with her. The film concludes with an image of the box of films in the Oswalt family's attic, now accompanied by Ashley's reel, labeled "House Painting '12".
Bughuul appears as a final 'BOO!' before the screen cuts to black. Sorry, I couldn't figure out a nice way to say 'the dumbasses that should have been dead weeks ago finally get snuffed and the psycho painter daughter runs off with the pseudo-demon-deity-pagan-whatever'.
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