Sinister is a Horror film directed by Scott Derrickson which came out in October of 2012. It stars Ethan Hawke and has a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, which I personally think is too low. All I saw when it came out was positive reviews and kids my age saying they were horrified coming out of the movie. So I had to see it. My friends and I just had to see it.

Please believe me when I say that this movie was SO scary in the theatre, that it was the first time I witnessed an entire two rows of the theatre jump out of their seats in unison. I’m not talking just jolted in their seats, I’m talking about SCREAMING and jumping at the same time so hard that popcorn flew up in the air. Two rows!

The movie is based on Ethan Hawke’s character Ellison, who is a writer that is looking for his next big New York Times Best selling story. He hasn’t had success in a long time, and decides to move his wife and two kids into this new house that they were able to buy for cheap. Ellison had heard that in that area there had previously been a murder of an entire family in which they had all been hung off of the same tree in their backyard. Little does Ellison know that he just moved into the house where the murder had taken place, and that tree that the family had been hung off of was the same tree he’s been looking at all along. Once he finds that out and starts writing about the case, he finds a box in his attic that has 5 reels of film in it and a projector. All of the reels each have a separate address and date on them, going way back to the 70s in some cases.

Each of the reels of tape shows a different family being murdered in some awful way, including the hanging that went on in Ellison’s backyard. And on top of that, he keeps seeing this figure pop up in all of them too.

This demon’s name is Bughuul and it loves to snatch children. It does so through these reels of film that Ethan Hawke is watching, and the movie continues to get scarier and scarier as it goes. A lot of the criticism for this movie was in its use of jump scares, but I for one think that this film used them perfectly.

Here is a clip of the scene that made the whole two rows jump in unison. It may have been one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a movie theatre apart from the fact that I screamed at it too. Fair warning, this IS a jump scare and the sound IS very startling. Watch at your own risk.

Because of moments like these and plenty more, I give this movie a 8/10, and I give it a permanent spot in my top 10 horror films of all time.