Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 29 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 27 Ratings

  • Starring: Ethan Hawke, James Ransone, Juliet Rylance
  • Summary: A true crime novelist discovers a box of mysterious, disturbing home movies that plunge his family into a nightmarish experience of supernatural horror. (Summit Entertainment)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 29
  2. Negative: 3 out of 29
  1. Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    Oct 10, 2012
    83
    It's all done in questionable taste, mucking around in the nasty terrain of snuff films and children in constant peril, but Sinister is smart and well-crafted, and it scarcely gives the audience a moment to breathe.
  2. Reviewed by: Joshua Rothkopf
    Oct 16, 2012
    60
    Sinister has so much going for it - adult psychology, a great bitchfest of a marital meltdown - that you wince when it finally makes some rather dull choices involving the supernatural.
  3. Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    Oct 11, 2012
    38
    The hero of Sinister is almost unaccountably dumb. So, unfortunately, is the movie.

See all 29 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 11
  2. Negative: 2 out of 11
  1. After a once-successful author decides to move his family into a house where a heinous murder took place, things start to get weird. That is great for the viewer and bad for the family. This film is a nightmarish voyage into the past of unsolved murders and how the missing link doesn't always need to be found. The chills are perfectly timed and the pace of this thrilling horror film is perfect, weaving in and out of states of undeniable tension with little effort. Ethan Hawke is superb as the the distraught author. This isn't a by-the-numbers genre piece. It packs soe interesting surprises. And it doesn't hold back on the thrills, chills, and gore. For the most part, this is what horror should be. The flaw, and not really a big one, is that yet again a horror movie features characters that do not act rationally. Still, that's a minor setback to an otherwise perfect gem of taught horror. Expand
  2. This film is more creepy and messed up than it is actually scary. All but one of the films scares are jump scares, and they're shown in the trailer. Really this is just like "Insidious" just with more gruesome killings. Not an awful movie, just not really scary. I will sleep fine tonight. Expand
  3. Sinister was a movie that I had happily be awaiting for some time. I really wanted to see if this movie could successfully scare me. The trailers looked good enough to convince me to drop 12 bucks and see what was up. What I got was a series of predicable scares, a villain who is completely useless, and road map for the last act of the film. If you pay attention to the movie, even with one eye open and half asleep, you can see every twist and turn this movie has coming by at least 10 mins before it does. Not to say the jump scares don't make you jump, they do, but for what? This movie is advertised as a horror movie with an actual story.. and sad to say It just isn't here. The last 5 min of the movie feel so lazy I was blown away, it just sort of stops. As if the movie is saying, "I'm bored of entertaining you... go home." I won't go into detail for spoiler sake, but instead of keeping adrenaline high an going out with a bang, this movie plays it safe, and you walk out of the theater with none of the scares or really anything for that matter to remember. I really wanted to love this movie and all it had to offer, but clearly this is one best saved for catching on a random day when it hits HBOGO. Expand

See all 11 User Reviews

Trailers

Showtimes

To get showtimes near you, enter your zip code.