10 Embarrassingly Poor Horror Movie Monsters

The first hour of Sinister is incredibly suspenseful, intriguing, and frightening stuff. With solid character development, a patiently established setting, and harrowing, serious, snuff-themed imagery, it’s the kind of marrow-chilling creeper that makes you want to sleep with the lights on.

Buguhl, the villain, is teased very effectively in well-timed, spooky scares. The mythology is gradually and fascinatingly revealed, as a true crime writer played with compelling vulnerability by Ethan Hawke slowly but surely uncovers the supernatural threat at the heart of the mystery of a murdered family.

But when Buguhl is finally revealed, it seems that Ethan Hawke is terrified of one of the guitar players from Slipknot.

Mick Thompson, Slipknot's #7, wears a mask based on a hockey mask which has distinctive blackened eyes and a sealed mouth, and Buguhl looks very much like it.

Of course, #7 didn't invent the repurposed hockey mask. Vorhees made it what it is today, and masked murderers have been a recurring presence in horror since long before the advent of the slasher genre. And of course, you could object that Buguhl isn't wearing a mask - that's his face.

Whatever the thinking behind the design, it has the hallmarks of heavy metal theatricality. Which absolutely, indisputably rules on its own terms. But if you want to actually scare someone in a movie with such an oppressively dark tone and with so much hard-edged, mean potential, you need a bit more than some heavy Kohl.