SPOILERS. Turn back now if you have not seen this movie!! Seriously!!! I talk in depth about the movie! Run now! OK, you’ve been warned!
I’m a big time film addict. Especially when it comes to horror films. So when I saw previews for Sinister, I got excited in the hopes that it would be original and have the perfect amount of fright inducing scenes.
I was not disappointed.
So here’s where the spoilers start.
The movie didn’t open with the typical normal group of teenagers at a party or a happy family moving into a new house. No, it opened with a home movie showing four family members being hung on a tree. And they weren’t hung in the typical fashion either. They were lifted by their necks into the tree. I was instantly hooked. Just the way that whole scene was shot, and there was no sound, was genius.
The next thing that really caught my attention was how the movie was playing out the story. It followed a once famous crime author trying to make back his fifteen. He was researching the hanging of that family as a murder and abduction of a young child. At the same time, he was dealing with personal problems in his family. I found this to be a nice sort of sub plot. Like, they could’ve continued the movie with him finding a killer and bringing them to justice and solving his family issues like he had intended, but this was not the case.
Enter Bagul. The main antagonist of the movie, he’s a demon that eats the souls of children. His image appears in the home movies found by Ellison, the main character. In these movies, he’s seen along with gruesome murders of entire families, minus one child.
Now, let’s talk about these movies real quick. They are beautiful. I mean, as far as creativity goes, they are genius. One murder is each family member is tied down to a lawn chair and then dragged into a swimming pool where they drown. All you can see is their feet thrashing for freedom that they never obtain. ‘Tis wonderful.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some sort of fruitcake that gets off on watching murders. I just enjoy very well done movies and stories.
Throughout the movie, I was curious if Bagul was real or not. The professor in the movie describes him as coming from Babylonian origin and even shows decayed frescos and illustrations of the demon. This helps to make you feel like the demon was actually something that people feared, but in reality, he’s made up for the movie. The way they tell his story though makes you think and wonder if he is really from lore. I wish he was! We need more movies based off of obscure legends rather than books and movies of long ago.
And the ending. The ending was gorgeous. There was no happy ending. There was no rainbow with unicorns in a parade of sunshine. There was blood. Severed heads and another child being taken away into the films by Bagul. Lovely!
Oh I may have forgotten to mention that. Bagul lives in the films and once you see him, you’re doomed. Through out the movie, Ellison sees the dead children that helped commit the murders and then were taken by Bagul. He first sees them in their photos when he’s researching for his book. Then he starts to see them in his house. Finally, he sees them in the films right before his young daughter kills him and is then taken.
In conclusion, this is a very well written movie with great acting and superb twists. Guaranteed to make you jump. Especially if you’re a seventeen year old girl (like the one I was stuck sitting in front of).