Movie Review: Sinister and Its Sinisterly Disappointing Supernaturalism
If you are a fellow horror movie fanatic (or a very impressionable 12 year old child back in 2012), you’ll recall the financial and commercial success of Sinister (2012), whose set-up is certainly sinister, but its inevitable supernatural twist totally disenchanting.
To preface this discussion, we must turn back the passage of time, back to the far-distant past of 2012, before gay marriage was legalized, and before the U.S. presidency was handed over to a complete nut-job. (At least Obama kept his war-crimes professional and on the down-low — and not to mention, strictly foreign.)
Prefacing Sinister’s own release, Insidious (2010) (Coincidental naming scheme, hm?), whose financial success estimated to $13.5 million over the weekend, breathed a fresh, modern air to the supernatural genre of horror after a decades worth of found footage following Paranormal Activity (2007), and the charmingly named trope of “torture porn” that was established with Saw (2004). Insidious’s unexpected popularity caused a surge of like-minded movies, who realized that the set-up of an unfathomably intimidating and identifiable supernatural presence was a new unexplored concept — one that had mass appeal.
Good on Insidious (2010) for being revolutionary in regards to its predecessors, right? Cue its barrage of intimidators, including The Conjuring (2013) (whose cheap sequels know no end), Ouija (2014), and, of course, Sinister (2013).
What’s upsetting is that Sinister’s premise has nothing to do with Insidious (2010), but rather revolves around a more psychological, serial-killer crime spin.
The preface is simple: A self-serving white dad who also happens to be a true-crime writer (What a new concept to the horror genre!), in his pursuit of the 5 minutes of fame he received off of his last book, moves his family into a house where another family was disturbingly hanged in the backyard — all of which was recorded on tape. The story escalates as, after finding this tape — and many others like it — tucked away in the attic, he begins to explore this unknown killer’s motives and methods, sacrificing his family relations, their safety, and his own sanity in his desperate thirst for recognition.
The real horror of this movie is not only the tidbits of disturbingly realistic-looking executions that are filmed like bonafide, homemade “snuff”, its the idea that someone out there — whose identity the protagonist seeks out with the rising suspicion that he is still at work — was able to perform such heinous and intimately sadistic acts on other human beings — specifically, entire families.
This leads the viewer to contemplate why the perpetrator is doing what he is. Why families? Are these acts of revenge for the happy domestic environment an entitled and twisted individual lacked? The happy family occasions, of which devolve into the subjects’ disturbing filmed deaths, give the viewer profound sense of loss — the happiness of the functional nuclear family is forcibly ended through unjust and inhumanly cruel violence.
This alone is a lot for an audience to mull over, especially in a world where such individuals, whose sole satisfaction come from the thrill of the deeply forbidden, have been proven to exist. It makes one fear for their own safety, and that of their loved ones. If someone out there could not stand to watch these families live out their lives happily, whose to say it cannot happen to one of us in real life?
Cue the inclusion of the occult. Your realistic fears, already manifested, are immediately relieved to find, “Oh, this isn’t real! It’s the act of a cliche devil-figure!”
What a cop-out, right?
After this, the movie — whose direction and plotting felt so meticulously planned and executed, begins to devolve and lose its own sense of purpose. Can humans be capable of such unfiltered evil, to the point where its filmed for personal pleasure and recollection? According to Sinister (2012), no, but a fictional demonic force can!
What adds salt to the gaping, uncomfortably filmed wound of this twist is the reveal that this paranormal force (named Bughuul, but endearingly nicknamed “Mr. Boogie” by its his victims) acts strictly through children. Not only is a supernatural entity inserted to perhaps replicate the general appeal of this movies’ predecessors, it also falls under the trope of creepy children, something that really only scares adults afraid of parenthood and its entailing commitment. (If you’re scared of children utilized in horror, perhaps analyze the fear of the responsibility of fostering a child who “turns bad”, and what that directly reflects on your perception of your own parenting capabilties.)
Thus, a horror movie that could have once again explored the darker and overlooked aspects of the human condition, cops out of its own discussion by involving a literal Boogie-Man to take the blame. (The movie starts centered around a True Crime author, for Bughuul’s sake! Society’s emotionally removed fascination and novelization of human-on-human violence and its entailing suffering isn’t a new concept!) Though Sinister (2012) began with the perfect set-up for an iconic and impressionable horror movie, it sacrificed its character to what was no-doubt considered marketable for the time, leaving us to ponder how horror and its themes are truly influenced by the society that sculpts them.
