Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 30 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 164 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: 12 out of 30
  2. Negative: 3 out of 30
  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: Bill Goodykoontz
    Oct 23, 2012
    80
    Now this is a scary movie. And, given that it's a horror film, that means it's a good one. [18 Oct 2012]
  3. 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.
  4. Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    Oct 11, 2012
    38
    The hero of Sinister is almost unaccountably dumb. So, unfortunately, is the movie.

See all 30 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 39 out of 52
  2. Negative: 4 out of 52
  1. This review contains spoilers. This film is incredible, the best film I've seen all year, it takes a lot to make me jump in a horror movie and this one made me jump twice in my books that's impressive. I was a bit skeptical at first but this film proved to be worth my time, this film escapes the cliche of a psycho murderer and I thought it was quite a clever plot although I think that it was a bit weird that they have the youngest child possessed by some sort of cult and killing their family members in gruesome bloody ways. However it was clever because no-one would suspect a child who is portrayed as innocent an sane who then disappears after murdering their family and have you believe that it was a murder and child abduction case. I also thought the mask was incredible and creepy. Loved this film. Collapse
  2. 8
    WOW... I expected nothing of this movie... I was so damn scary. At least the most scariest movie this year. What scene gives me the most creeps especially?? the pool scene on the tape. That thing what ate the kids looks nothing alike in the other tapes. It was if he had a very long nose, whaha.. Ands all those kids in the attic freaks me out too. I have to check all of my paintings tonight :P Expand
  3. I thought the film was pretty good for the price I paid to see it. It was more eerie than scary but had a couple of "oh crap!" moments that catch you off guard. I thought Ethan Hawke did an awesome job acting as a progressively semi-crazy individual. My only complaint would be that the audience needs more of a history lesson in the origins of the demon and why He/It does what He/It does. All-in-all, a pretty good flick. Expand
  4. 4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Sinister is one of those paranormal, occult movies I've been waiting to play in theaters; however, after watching this film I was left disappointed. The ending was too obvious. The storyline was dragged on, wasted, and never even met it's climax. The character's names aren't even memorable. It had the stereotypical annoying, jobless wife or the "housewife", creepy kids, and an obsessed writer. The writer of this film took no authentic advantages of the daughter who was seeing Stephanie, or the son and his night terrors. The son could of been dreaming and the demon thing could've started appearing in his dreams as if it was trying to possess him and that could've been why his night terrors were progressive; and, the daughter was used at the very end, but there were no evident changing behaviors like her drawing pictures of their family dying or her saying weird things. But, instead, It's like the children were just "there". There are no other settings in the movie, in which eliminates the chances for striking, memorable scenes or encounters. Happenings like the skinny policeman or deputy sneaking data for the dad's book and the old deputy/sheriff guy getting suspicious, or the old guy checking up on the dad trying to see what he's up to or taking his tapes and data. Or, kids being bullied, and teachers worried about the son or daughter's behavior or drawings. Or, neighbors and townspeople giving the family crazy looks or disapproval like the wife said they were. Or even, the dad could have hallucinated the demon/children soul-eater thing in a library when researching or asking neighbors about the past family who lived in that house. In his son's room, IT could've been standing or kneeling beside his son's bed while his son is sleeping and whispering into his son's ear of something to possess him all while the dad can't even see IT, then later his son has another night terror. Or, the dad could be hallucinating about IT in public places because of obsession to his "detective work". They never even showed the dad trying to start writing his new book. After they moved, that should have been the half-mark of the movie, because so much could have happened then. At the end, they could've at least added a special scene where the police find their bodies, take the tapes into evidence, then watch them appalled. Overall, although I expected more out of Sinister, the eerie sounds and music, the disturbing kill scenes, the creepy pool scene where you first see IT, the use of the manual, old, and new technology (homemade evidence board, film projector, and the laptop), and seeing Ethan Hawke in a new movie made it likeable. Expand

See all 52 User Reviews

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