Not sure what the hell actor Ethan Hawke has been doing for the past couple of years but he’s not in particularly good form in Sinister. He portrays Ellison, a true crime writer who stumbles upon a serial killer of sorts. The movie has a surprisingly strong start but limps to the finish as Ellison (Hawke) has moved to a small town in order to better research a book he’s writing about a family that died in a gruesome hanging carried out by an unknown perpetrator. Ellison neglects to tell his wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance) and two children Ashley (Clare Foley) and Trevor (Michael Hall D’Addario) that he’s purchased the actual house where the family was murdered. Strange things began happening rather quickly after Ellison finds a box of video tapes that show the murder of not one but several families. It doesn’t take long before the subtleties evaporate and the film follows a familiar trajectory on the way to its grisly ending.
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2012.
