Film Filter: Off - Sinister

Film Filter: Off-  I vividly remember seeing this movie trailer as an advertisement on a youtube video I was watching, and I was instantly interested.  Above and beyond the fact that it was made by the same people who brought you Insidious and Paranormal Activity, the story seemed interesting and I am always a sucker for the supernatural.

Pros- The acting definitely helped this movie feel pretty realistic.  Ethan Hawke hasn’t been in much recently that I can recall, but I feel like he did a commendable job in this film.  The effectiveness came from a mix from his character alone, and almost more importantly, the way the locals treated him and the interactions between him and his family.  They helped characterize his role sometimes even more so than he did.  There were many moments in the characters where they had a conflicting persona than they had originally started with, and I think that most of them played both sides of their characters well.

   Despite the fact that this movie and Insidious have pretty much the same type of story line, I actually found myself enjoying this one more.  Some of the differences that made this one stand out in my mind were the scaffolding of the antagonist’s face.  Although Insidious did the same thing, I found that Sinister didn’t overdo it with special effects like Insidious did.  This film also did a better job of creating something that felt a tad more realistic.  While both focused on paranormal entities that we can choose to believe or not, it became a little too incredulous in Insidious when he went into the “other realm” and I sort of checked out after that.  This one, while still remaining a fantasy at times, felt more believable for a longer period of time.

   One of the things that this movie did very well, which in my opinion is an important staple of a good horror movie, is the scare factor.  Sure, some of the scares were cheap shots, and almost ALL of them were predictable but it didn’t change the fact that pretty much all of them were effective.  Going hand in hand with the scare factor in this movie was the use of music/sounds in the film.  A lot of times something that may not have been visually frightening became so with the proper use of music and sound occurring in the background.  This was pretty much the root of why predictable moments became effectively scary, despite the fact that most of the audience saw them coming.

Cons- Overall, I didn’t have many qualms with this film, other than the run-of-the-mill persnickety comments.  I found it slightly annoying that Ethan Hawke’s character ignored phone calls from the deputy, especially given the circumstances of their situation.

   It was also frustrating that the demon spirit was intangible, but able to move things.  I mean, maybe he was tangible but it seems that, since he was a demon that was killing people by using children, he needed them in order to carry out tangible tasks.  Otherwise, wouldn’t he just do it himself?

   On a side note, I (selfishly) would have liked a little bit more information on the Pagan Deity Maghoul, Bagool…whatever his name was.  I tried looking him up online, but he’s pretty elusive.  Must be he’s never heard of Facebook.

Wrap up- This is an excellent movie choice if you are looking for the following: good scares, interesting story line, good character interactions.

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