8 Good Films One Crippling Flaw Away From Being Awesome

7. Sinister

The Flaw: The Third Act Of all the James Wan led 'low budget - high yield' genre of horror movies, Sinister had the greatest shot at being deemed 'awesome'. The set up is simple enough: Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), a struggling true-crime novelist, moves his family into a house that had previously played host to a family's horrific demise. So far, so run-of-the-mill. The opening hour of the film is well-paced, unsettling and a cut above most of Hollywood's recent efforts thanks to the introduction of a cache of 8mm films which capture the barbaric and brutal deaths of five families on celluloid. As Oswalt watches the films the casual viewer is turned into a snuff voyeur, as these truly terrible scenes - accompanied by the obtrusive and abrasive rattle of the projector €“ unfold before our very eyes. Brilliantly the film hides as much as it displays, allowing our minds to fill in the gaps €“ which is always more fear inducing than bathing the screen in claret. Then, as the film nears its climax and the character of 'Mr Boogie' becomes more prevalent, things start to unravel. For some reason the filmmakers decided to instantly undo the slow-burn setup of the previous hour by allowing the movies most 'sinister' character to cavort around the set like a drunk children's entertainer, hiding in the attic and jumping out at the camera in a bid to get a cheap scare. This reliance on older more clichéd methods of spooking the audience has the reverse affect, dispersing the tension and unsettling atmosphere as the horror tropes mount up. Sinister could have been a genuinely nasty, well-acted and unsettling diamond in the rough. Instead it missed out on greatness by allowing its final act to conform to genre stereotypes. In future, if you want the audience to jump just play Kris Kross €“ though that too may ruin the movie.