Sinister

31 Days of Horror: Day 4

"From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious"?  Does that mean that Sinister is not a slasher film or remake, but *gasp* another new, suspense-driven horror flick?  Well, that remains to be seen.  I do like the change of pace we've seen over the last few years, away from cheap scares and toward better-acted and -directed horror films.  I'm not saying that we're in a horror renaissance or anything --- a lot of crap movies are still being made --- but I am seeing more types of horror, with varying levels of quality, and I like that.  Of course, these new IPs have already spawned multiple crappy sequels, but that's a problem for another time.

Ellison (Ethan Hawke) is a true-crime writer that is a few books past his prime.  His specialty is to investigate cold cases and then speculate wildly, often throwing local police under the bus in the process.

His other hobbies include having the audience watch him watch something on the screen

If that doesn't make him charming enough, he is what all authors in movies are: a heavy drinker.  Ellison has just moved his family, wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance), son Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario) and daughter Ashley (Clare Foley), into a new home in a small town where there is a major unsolved murder case.  Four members of a family were found hanged to death in their backyard; the fifth member of the family, a young daughter, disappeared without a trace.  There were no real clues in the case and no suspects.  The upside to the murders is that Ellison got his house very cheap.  That's right...he bought the murder house.  Logically, that shouldn't make a difference.  But in Sinister, it does.  While investigating/moving his crap into the house, Ellison comes across a box of Super8 home movies.

"Super8 tapes...this will definitely help me with the murder that happened in 2011!"

Despite the odds of these tapes being useful, Ellison finds footage of the murder.  Not the kind that points to a killer, mind you, but more like the snuff film variety.  But there's more.  There are three other tapes, showing three other family massacres, dating back to the mid-sixties.  The more Ellison studies the films and investigates the different murder cases, the more Ellison notices similarities.  These are all families being killed, there are no suspects or clues in any of the murders, and the youngest child in each family is never found.  Oh, and a dude with a creepy face keeps showing up in the background of the scenes and in the drawings of the missing children.

Mr. Boogie appears to be naked

If that's not creepy enough for you, how about this?

He's being haunted by Slipknot?

But how can the same person have killed all those people over such a wide stretch of time?  What is happening to the missing children?  Are we looking at an elderly serial killer, or a legacy of murder being passed on from generation to generation?  Or is it something more *groan* Sinister?

The acting in Sinister relies heavily on the performance of Ethan Hawke.  That's not a huge surprise, since the movie is essentially watching him watch home movies.  Hawke is pretty good, though; he's certainly not likable, but he did a good job showing fear slowly creep up.  The rest of the family was an afterthought in the script, but it is worth noting that Juliet Rylance's character was right 100% of the time; she didn't have a juicy role, but there is something to be said for being the voice of logic and reason in a horror movie, even if it is a thankless task.  The kids were just kids.

...and just kids are just creepy

Performance-wise, they were adequate.  My only takaway is that Michael Hall D'Addario needs a damn haircut.  Fred Dalton Thompson makes a brief appearance as an unfriendly sheriff, and I guess he was fine.  I was a bit surprised to see James Ransone playing the part of the deputy; Ransone seems to specialize in weasely characters, so it was nice to see him try something new, even if his character wasn't particularly interesting. Slightly more effective was Vincent D'Onofrio's cameo as a college professor, if only because his post-Law & Order speech cadence really lends itself to somewhat windy knowitalls. 

Sinister was directed and co-written by Scott Derrickson.  His work in this film marks both the movie's strengths and weaknesses.  On the plus side, Derrickson did a great job building up suspense and creating a creepy haunted house vibe.  However, that is only effective because of how creepy the Super8 snuff films are and some impressive sound effects.  The script itself is a bit of a mess, as it seems torn between wanting to be a true crime mystery with the haunted house being a side effect of Ellison's drinking and being a straight-up supernatural horror movie.

Similarly, is this frightening, or is she doing an impression of a handicapped person?

I thought the final decision as to what direction the movie was going in came too late, which makes some bits confusing in retrospect, unless you're satisfied with the explanation *waves hands* MAGIC.  Derrickson is also not much of a stickler to details.  For instance, all of the "Mr. Bogey" pictures looked like they were drawn by the same person, instead of by several different children, decades apart.  And then there's Ellison's note-taking skills, where he wastes most of a page with a very basic question, just so the camera can see it being written.  Those are fairly nit-picky problems, I know, but it's not like I'm asking where the killer found Super8 film to record the most recent killings.  Oh, that's right: MAGIC. 

Murder victims are the next howling wolves for hipster T-shirts

And that's really too bad.  Sinister comes very, very close to being a cool movie.  The home videos are disturbing.  There is atmosphere and tension.  The villain has a cool look to him.  And then the story settles for a supernatural explanation and starts throwing in all sorts of cheap scares.  You know what would have made this movie better?  Not having a goddamned bogeyman as the culprit.  Someone kidnapping small children, raising them to be killers, and then watching them pay it forward would have fit this movie far better than some sort of shadow demon that kills people because of arbitrary property lines (a much-abbreviated explanation, but essentially accurate).  Still, just thinking about those 8mm videos creeps me out, so it's not a total loss.

Daybreakers

Let's assume that the inevitable vampire apocalypse happens in a few years.  What would that world look like?  According to Daybreakers, surprisingly similar to today.  In the year 2019, the world has become overwhelmingly populated with vampires; vampirism has spread like a pandemic, infecting almost the entire human population.  Aside from the streets being empty during the day, though, things appear much as they do now.  There's still TV, vampires drive cars, drink coffee (with sugar and blood), and eat normal stuff.  They just happen to catch fire and explode in the sun.  With vampires being so much like their human selves, it is not surprising that they are running through their most precious natural resource: human blood.  Yes, it is a subtle allegory.  The number of "wild" humans is almost nonexistent and, even with human farms (a term that is not used in the movie, but totally should have been), the supply of human blood will run out in a matter of days.

So, what's the big deal?  There are lots of animals that bleed.  Unfortunately, human blood is the only blood that can keep vampires from turning into monsters.  With extended periods of human blood starvation, normal human-looking vamps begin to change; they become paler, their ears become pointed, they lose the ability to speak, their hands become claws, and they grow wings.  Basically, they end up looking like Nosferatu with wings.

Ethan Hawke's character is a vampire hematologist (Hilarious!  Aren't they all amateur hematologists?) that is trying to create a human blood substitute for the vampire population.  So far, his best result has led to his vampire subject exploding.  And that, apparently, was progress.  Hawke works for Sam Neill's company; Neill wants to farm humans out for their blood.  Why he is funding Hawke's work when he clearly just wants human blood, I don't know.  They kind of explain this (the general population gets the substitute, while the rich pay for the good stuff), but Neill later claims this was a lie.  Whatever.  Hawke happens to hate being a vampire.  He doesn't want to die, but he has been abstaining from human blood for a while, drinking only pig's blood.  He accidentally encounters the human resistance and meets Willem Dafoe's character, a  human that was once a vampire.  Together, they work to find a cure to vampirism...but will anyone want it?

As far as vampire movies go, this is a solid entry into the genre.  It's smarter than a lot of vampire movies and I liked the pseduo-science that went into the script.  Hawke's work with Dafoe was interesting, if a little silly, and followed a moderately logical stream of thought.  Basically, the sun starts a vampire's heart beating, but it increases too fast, causing their body heat to increase, eventually lighting on fire.  The explosions aren't explained.  Still, that's not a terrible idea, so writers/directors Michael and Paul Spierig deserve some recognition for trying to make vampirism sound scientific.  I liked a lot of little touches in the movie.  I liked that vampires can buy cars that have darkened windows and digital video cameras so they can drive in the daylight.  I like that they don't only drink blood, but it is an important part of their diet.  I really liked that this movie explained the more monstrous style of vampires; you don't usually see the scary vampires in the same movie with human-ish vampires.  A lot of thought went into the production for the lifestyle of vampires, and it really comes through in the details of this film.

That said, this movie could have used more attention to the script.  To give you an idea of the poor choices made in this movie, Willem Dafoe sings a few lines of Elvis Presley's "Burning Love."  Yes, it's awkward.  There are other things that just don't make sense.  Sam Neill has a human daughter that is captured.  He has her turned into a vampire against her will, despite knowing how close they all are to starvation.  Not exactly father of the year material.  There is a scene where humans are traveling great distances to reach a supposedly safe hiding spot for humans, but they decide to travel at night.  Maybe I have more military training (I have seen several war movies) than the Spierig brothers, but that just strikes me as stupid to a fault.  Should they travel through empty streets during the day, or travel at night, when vampires are active?  Tough call.  That sort of random stupidity is all too common in this movie and really keeps it from being genuinely good.

The acting is solid, despite a largely foreign cast.  Ethan Hawke apparently combs his hair back only when he's a vampire, but is fine aside from that.  Willem Dafoe is Willem Dafoe; he's not winning over anyone with this performance, but he is typically solid and over-the-top at the same time.  Sam Neill does a good job with this villainous turn; he does not appear to like acting in American movies much, but it's always nice to see him pop up. Claudia Karvan, Jay Laga'aia, and Michael Dorman turn in respectable supporting performances, but nobody really stands out.  As far as direction goes, the Spierig brothers seem competent, but I think directing is just their way of getting their screenplays to the big screen.

Daybreakers has an interesting concept with a lot of good detail, but the story allows a lot of stupid things to happen.  I'll give the Spierig brothers kudos for trying to make a smart vampire movie, but they don't succeed here.