19 – Moving Pictures (Sinister)

Dodging to the side as the mummified figure’s attention is squarely on the late Mr Banner, you dash through the jagged glass opening and into the dim foyer of the abandoned cinema. Turning this way and that you flee down a long corridor with sets of double doors set along its length. Choosing one you burst through the doors and into an ornate looking Auditorium.

Crouching low you slip into a row of plush red velvet seats, a musty smell assaulting your senses, the place has seen better days. Listening intently you hear the slight swish swish as the doors you burst through moments ago slowly stop swinging, then…silence.

With a screech that threatens to send you once again into a sprint you realise it’s the sound of the projector starting up. A bright beam of light slices through the darkness and onto the screen at the front of the room.

Mesmerised you watch as black and white footage appears. A grisly scene, a first person view, looking down at bandaged, bloody hands emerging from the body of a man. The view lingers for a moment before the camera, or the eyes of the killer, turn sharply to the left and the familiar broken glass opening into the cinema comes into view.

The shot moves through the opening, the view bobbing up and down, matching the measured yet relentless pace of the creature. Now the shot is in the corridor…it stops. Moving again, left, then right, finally settling on a set of double doors…but which ones?

A familiar voice, the man from the phone call, cuts through the air.

“I think you should be going now.”

I feel like I’m on pretty firm ground with this particular film. It’s one I’ve watched on several occasions and my first watch was in ideal circumstances, alone, at night, when the scares are so much more effective. I tend to hear fairly mixed comments about this film though generally not too extreme either way, but neither is it really middle of the road, does that make sense? Well either way, let’s find out. This time, it’s 2012’s Sinister.

I came into this film when I first saw it, with no prior knowledge, I didn’t even know what it was about really, bar the short Synopsis on whichever streaming service I was watching it through. I was watching it in the way that I’m sure most people consume horror films, alone, at night, on a cross-trainer…I was on a bit of a health kick at the time. It turns out that it’s not just the first two which helped to enhance the fear factor. Being in the middle of the room, with plenty of room for someone or something to be behind you, and with the added…benefit…of the vooom, vooom, vooom of the cross trainer potentially masking the sound of an approach, quite frankly this film scared the shit out of me.

Now I don’t really think I scare too easily. I mean this would be an odd endeavour if I did, but honestly, this film has some moments in it which put me very on edge and I’m sure that even if I hadn’t had the perfect storm of how I was watching it I would have found them scary. That isn’t to say that the whole film succeeds in this way, it has it’s fair share of cheesy, stereotypical moments and as with many horror films it loses much of its potency towards the end, but the moments it does have, really stuck with me.

The film follows the Oswalt family who have just moved into a new home. A home where a murder recently took place. The father, Ellison, is the only family member aware of this fact and unbeknownst to his wife and children, moved them there so he could write his next true crime novel about the incident at the house. Shortly after moving in he finds an old home movie camera in the attic along with some labelled reels of film. Ellison watches the horrific home movies and gets drawn further and further into a disturbing mystery.

The home movies are really what gives this film a step up in my opinion. I’m a big fan of the found footage genre as a whole as to my mind it provides the most scares. They feel real and are often unpredictable, the rules aren’t the same when it comes to found footage. Now the movies in this do follow a formula so really…ignore what I said about unpredictability, but they’re short and you know that something bad is coming in each of them so they have you on edge. They’re generally dingy and disorientating with little or no sound and you’re just there as a voyeur, a waking witness to a nightmare.

It’s not all good though. Personally, I think the ‘villain’ is the least scary part of the film, and as horror films tend towards, becomes less and less scary as it goes on. I’ll go into this in a bit more detail in the spoilers section but essentially the film would be better with some things remaining a mystery.

The acting is solid. Ellison, who we see much more than any other character, is played by Ethan Hawke, an actor I have a lot of time for particularly in films like Gattaca and Training Day where he is excellent. I wouldn’t say that Sinister is a stand out performance for him but then he’s playing a fairly regular guy and is very believable in the part which frankly is what horror films like this need, we need to relate to him and we need it to feel real, I think he succeeds at that.

Score time. I really like this film, I’m not going to argue that it’s a masterpiece, but it’s a good horror film, it’s scary, the premise is different and there’s a mystery aspect to it which for me adds depth. I’m going to give Sinister 4 lawnmowers out of 5, watch this one alone, in the dark…just try and avoid watching it on a cross trainer.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

There is one particular scene in the film which instantly comes to mind whenever Sinister comes up in conversation, the lawnmower scene. Of all the grim little home movies we see throughout the film, this is the most disturbing to my mind and the one which makes me involuntarily tense up. As with the other films it starts innocuously enough, viewing a family through a window. We then cut to an almost top down view of a lawnmower on a patio in the rain. The lighting here, presumably from a light on the camera, gives a vignette quality to the scene with the edges of the shot shrouded in darkness. The person holding the camera starts to push the mower along the patio then onto the lawn, picking up speed, when suddenly a face comes into view, one of the victims tied up on the floor and we cut away just as the mower hits their head and a horrible shrieking noise cuts through the quiet scene. Even now, viewing the scene again as I write this paragraph, part of me wanted to just remember it as best I could rather than watch it again. On a slightly lighter note, my friend Jenny and I were watching this a while back and somebody rang the doorbell just as the mower was making its way across the grass and we pretty much shit ourselves.

I mentioned earlier that the ‘Villain’ is one of the more disappointing aspects of the film. His name is Bughuul, a Babylonian God who takes one child from a family, killing the rest. He does this through the child themselves who he gets to kill their own family. It’s a great premise, but we don’t need to see Bughuul, especially when he just looks like some dude going to a Slipknot gig, I think it would have been far more effective if we just knew that the children were being coerced by a demonic presence, and left it at that. Murderous children are far scarier.

I really enjoyed the mystery aspect to the film. Ellison, the Deputy…seriously we don’t get a name for him…and Professor Jonas unearthing new details as we feel time running out for the Oswalt family. The final kick being the revelation that, having just moved house, all of the previous murders occurred after the families moved out of house the previous crime happened in. It’s little additions like this that I think, along with the home movies themselves, lift the film up above potential mediocrity.

That’s honestly all I can think of for the spoilers section. I could talk about each of the home movies but really I’ve talked about the one I had the most to say about and this isn’t supposed to be a round up of everything that happens, just those bits I felt like I wanted to bring up. There isn’t much more too outstanding, good or bad, that’s the nature of a 4 out of 5 lawnmowers film.

Now, what shall I watch next, perhaps I should check the attic…

11 – A Sound Decision (Dead Silence)

You awake. The red glow seems diminished, the sound has stopped but your head feels thick and heavy…congested. As your sleep wracked eyes adjust you see why the glow is reduced, a bright shaft of sunlight spears from an opening in the upper side of the cavern. Tumbled rocks from the opening suggest whatever made the hole came from outside, the black object perhaps?

Making your way towards the…sphere, it’s a sphere, you stumble and throw out a hand to break your fall, grazing your palm in the process. You cry out! In…silence. You make no sound, not your voice, not your feet on the rocks. Nothing. Did that sound deafen you. Is this temporary…or…

You scramble away from the object, turning towards the opening, towards the sunlight, eager to get away from the sound which you can no longer hear. The scattered rocks and scree form a treacherous slope up to the exit hole and you scrabble your way up and out into a brilliant blue skied day.

As soon as you exit the cavern the sound of rushing water fills your ears. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. Before you a narrow gorge splits a valley not much wider. A road twists and turns up either side, joined by a simple metal bridge spanning the turbulent crevasse, the rushing river that formed it the source of the sound.

Looking down you see a clear path down the grassy slope to the edge of the road. The grass of the path is not just trampled though, in fact it barely looks disturbed. Except for the fact that it’s dead. Wilted and brown next to the bright green either side, you don’t like the look of it.

Keeping to one side, you follow it down.

A somewhat more silly entry this time. James Wan’s 2007 film ‘Dead Silence’.

This is essentially a haunted doll film but using a ventriloquist dummy and a dark history surrounding it’s operator to give the film it’s own flavour. We follow the film’s protagonist Jamie Ashen, played by Ryan Kwanten as he searches for the truth behind the loss of his wife, all whilst being shadowed by a Police Detective played by Donnie Wahlberg, who I hadn’t really heard of, but he’s the brother of Mark Wahlberg, who I definitely have heard of.

This film has a very late 90s early 2000s ‘Dark Castle’ look to it, which I certainly don’t see as a bad thing, which you’ll see when I get round to reviewing ‘House on Haunted Hill’ or ’13 Ghosts’…‘Ghost Ship’, not so much. But essentially it’s a bit campy, but still creepy, and characters are somewhat caricatures. It’s very different in tone to Wan’s later supernatural work like ‘Insidious’ or ‘The Conjuring’ which are much more serious.

The film does manage to be creepy, but it’s short lived and only lasts so long as the source, mostly the dummy, or lack thereof is happening. This isn’t a film that’s going to leave you on edge after it’s over. Mostly the film relies on jump scares, which as I just mentioned have a short shelf life in our minds.

What I will say is that the film is fun. It’s an entertaining horror film, one to watch with friends, quite likely to laugh at or share in the gross out moments and go “Oooooh” at the reveals. Fun. Nothing special though.

One of the effects which is used in the film is the silence aspect. When something supernatural is about to happen the sound of various objects reduces, then stops. Or at least that what I think it should do, in fact what seems to happen is they slow down or at the very least get deeper before they stop. This leaves me unclear if sound is just ceasing or if time is actually stopping as well, though if it is then nothing else is implying that. It’s a minor quibble but something that bugged me since it’s one of the more interesting ‘gimmicks’ in the film.

The dummy design is good and it sticks to a classic look which is good to see. No attempt has been made to make the dummy extra creepy, it’s a dummy they’re creepy how they are. Despite other parts of this film being a bit over the top the use of the dummy is actually well done and subtle, for the most part.

As I said earlier the look of the film is a little larger than life and this means it has some fun sets. The old town of Raven’s Fair has that New England gothic look to it and of particular mention is the town’s Theatre which is a full on fog bound evil villain’s castle of a building mixed with the nostalgia of somewhere once full of life. If there’s one area where this film does well it’s with the sets.

The use of special effects if the film is limited mostly to the supernatural aspects but they honestly detract from the practical stuff which is great.

What about the plot, does it hold up? Well the main story is pretty one dimensional, we essentially follow the same character for 90% of the film but the pacing is good and I never found it dragged, even when watching it second time. It tries to make things overly complicated towards the end and I wouldn’t say any of the characters really grab you. What did grab me though was the flashback story about half way through introducing us to the character Mary Shaw, more on that in the spoiler section but it stood out to me and helped to break up the otherwise linear style.

Score time. Quite an easy one to score this one, It’s decidedly middle of the road, as is my scoring system. 3 Tongues out of 5. Looking for a group film that’s got some creep factor without causing you a sleepless night, something not too cerebral, then this probably won’t disappoint, but it won’t do anything else either.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So there’s a twist in the film. I avoided mentioning it in the main review, well I mentioned reveals, because if you say a film has a twist then people end up trying to work that out rather than watching it as they should. The twist is actually pretty fun, well half of it is, the other half I felt wasn’t explained well enough. Part way into the film we meet Jamie’s father, played by Bob Gunton of ‘Shawshank Redemption’ fame! Now wheelchair bound after a supposed stroke and never without the helping hand of his young wife, played by Amber Valletta.

It turns out the reason we never see them apart is because Jamie’s poor father has been hollowed out as is in fact a corpse dummy being controlled by his wife who has been vocalising for him as well. Great, that’s quite fun, and sick, we see some of Wan’s penchant for macabre contraptions come through here. Now what wasn’t that obvious to me, but maybe I’m a dummy…hah…is that the wife is a doll, the perfect doll in fact and possessed by Mary Shaw. Initially that went right over my head as a lot is revealed at the point in the film and I figured she was a relative or something, even though it never says that, oh I don’t know! It just didn’t come through for me.

Now I actually watched this film twice, as I’d seen it a few months back but felt that wasn’t recent enough to give it a proper review, so knowing the twist actually made it fairly watchable the 2^nd time and I noticed the wife’s hand position and the twitchy movements of the dad, it really does deserve some kudos for that.

The method of killing in the film puts me in mind of ‘Saw’ and the reverse bear trap. It’s suitably gruesome though not as viscerally graphic as what we see in the ‘Saw’ films, again this is more fantasy than reality. It was an interesting idea to make it so that if you scream you die but ultimately it makes it more cheesy and you start getting worked up about what counts as a scream…well at least I did.

So about that flashback story. One of the characters reminisces about going to Mary Shaw’s show back in the 40s and we get a great scene where a kid says he can see Mary’s lips moving and she then has an argument with Billy, the Dummy, with the two talking over each other. This shuts the kid up. But then what really shuts the kid up is going missing a couple of weeks later and never being seen again. Not that is until much later in the film where Jamie and the detective discover his corpse has been made into a puppet. This is probably the most disturbing story within the film and it’s then totally ruined when they’re like “Wow we solved a 70 year old missing persons case” they seem so unfazed and blasé about finding a fucking puppet made out of a child’s corpse!

It could make me scre…