Sinister

I get really scared at scary movies.  When we watched Paranormal Activity a couple of years ago, I read a bunch of spoilers online beforehand and then insisted on keeping the lights on while watching it.  So after the reading a couple of review snippets, I was pretty scared to see Sinister, to say the least.  So we decided to go to a daytime showing, in a dine-in theater (I thought the waiters walking around would lighten any especially scary or tense moments).

Sinister centers on a crime writer (played by Ethan Hawke) who moves his family into a house where the prior occupants have recently been massacred, and the youngest daughter gone missing.  Ellison (the dad) discovers some film reels in the attic, and soon after, strange things begin happening.  His kids experience bouts of sleepwalking and night terrors, and Ellison hears noises in the attic, and no matter what he does, he just can't get rid of those film reels.  Basically, something SINISTER is going on (in case you were wondering where the title came from.  I'm here to help, you know?).  Ellison struggles to make sense of the past and present.

I thought Sinister was just OK, and moreover, it wasn't THAT scary.  There were some decidedly creepy moments but the whole film felt like it was building up to something that never really arrived.  Well, it does sort of arrive at the very, very end, but it's really brief, and it's kind of like, "That's it?"  It wasn't terrible but I just felt like it didn't really deliver.  5.5 out of 10.