Sinister Reviews
Matt's Movie Reviews
One of the more authentically scary horror thrillers to haunt the screen in some time, a product of smart filmmaking, intriguing premise and a great lead performance from Ethan Hawke.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
3AW
Highly effective, tense little fright rouser... If you're a horror fan, you won't be disappointed.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
The Sunday Age
Hawke brings a gravitas to the role of parent and home protector that is of far greater interest than the film itself.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
2UE That Movie Show
Sinister is a subtle, poetic inquisition into the hypnotic power of horrific images ... oh and it's frightening entertainment at its best.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Urban Cinefile
I especially like inventive horror concepts, or those with a bizarre sense of humour. Sinister has the former: inventiveness, which is increasingly difficult to create in a genre as enormous as horror
Georgia Straight
Sinister overcomes an iffy script to reel you in with one seriously creepy vibe.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
It owes more than a debt of gratitude to The Shining and The Ring, among others, but Derrickson processes the chilling influences into an eerie experience mindful of the significance of projected images watched alone in the dark.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Daily Star
Hawke is utterly convincing as the driven but dodgy writer and Derrickson has great fun infecting the quivering audience with his hero's creeping paranoia.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Killer Movie Reviews
has the all too rare virtue of being a horror film with a fine gloss of originality and genuine surprise to it
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Q Network Film Desk
Derrickson is a sharp stylist who knows how to meld dreadful imagery with actual ideas that make his horror films more than just exercises in goose-the-audience manipulation
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Common Sense Media
Writer/director Scott Derrickson has a touch for using old horror movie tools to create new scares, and he also incorporates several interesting themes into Sinister.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Antagony & Ecstasy
A most delicious kind of horror movie... gives us a nice adrenaline boost and otherwise doesn't linger.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7/10
Boston Phoenix
Sinister isn't perfect, but it easily tops most of its scare-starved competition.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Tucson Weekly
I'm uh-scared, I'm uh-scared!"
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Indebted to some welcome influences, including King ('The Shining') and Antonioni ('Blowup').
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
HollywoodChicago.com
I never look at Rotten Tomatoes until after I publish my review. My reviews agree with the Tomatometer 77% of the time. While "Sinister" is fresh here based on 100+ reviews, it's only barely so at 63%. That's wrong. This is the best horror film of 2012.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5.0
Looking Closer
Sinister is not only director Scott Derrickson's most fully realized vision but also his most personal film. And as haunted houses go, this one is beautifully noisy.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Tri-City Herald
Decent but not extraordinary. I don't know about you but when weird noises happen in my house, when I think someone might be skulking about, I turn on the lights. Lots of them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
KPBS.org
Sinister does falter but it does so early on and finishes strong so that you leave the theater with the best bits fresh in your mind and the disappointing ones starting to fade.
7M Pictures
taps into the psychological terror that has been missing from a lot of modern horror movies
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
