15 Must-See Blumhouse Movies
7. Sinister
Sinister is another film from before the current horror revival started and thus another pleasantly surprising diamond in a seemingly endless sea of turds.
Easily one of the best studio horror films of the early 2010s, Sinister works on two levels. Firstly, it's a bone-chilling supernatural thriller loaded with atmosphere and full of pleasingly restrained, highly effective jump scares and secondly, it's full of thought-provoking drama regarding the protagonist, Ethan Hawke's struggling true crime writer. Although this character is a familiar trope, he's given real shade and depth thanks to the surprisingly solid script and Hawke's great performance.
Sinister is admittedly formulaic and recycles many genre cliches (the family moving into a new house, the obsessive artist etc.) but given how effectively these tropes are deployed, Sinister makes all these cliches feel fresh and new. Best of all, it has a diabolically twisted ending that's among this decade's greatest horror finales.