More stupid than scary, Sinister can't even figure out who its real demon is.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 13, 2012

It comes together with a gruesome though excellent ending that some will find difficult to shake.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 12, 2012

A mixed bag of old-school and contemporary horror tricks that occasionally raises a hair prickle of intrigue.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 12, 2012

Despite some effective bumps and frights, and at least one memorable jolt from a full-throated D'Addario, "Sinister" is mainly just a series of snuff-reels with sick-joke titles ...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 12, 2012

C'mon, Ethan Hawke, you're better than this. Isn't there a "Before Sunset" sequel that needs your attention?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 12, 2012

The hero of "Sinister" is almost unaccountably dumb. So, unfortunately, is the movie.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 12, 2012

As the best horror stories so often do, "Sinister" makes clear that we are our own boogeymen, the worst monsters of all.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 11, 2012

In its plot and even its title, the movie feels like a grab bag of every popular horror trope of the last 30 years.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 11, 2012

As much as "Sinister" wants to tell a story, there isn't much of a story to be told.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 11, 2012

Relies more on "gotcha" moments than storytelling.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 11, 2012

Now this is a scary movie. And, given that it's a horror film, that means it's a good one.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 11, 2012

[Director Scott Derrickson finds] new ways to frame the same rooms from one scene to the next and providing comic relief whenever the action threatens to turn monotonously grim.

| Oct 11, 2012

Only in the world of horror movies do people knowingly move into houses where the previous tenants were horrendously murdered.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 11, 2012

The movie is full of feints, shocks and scenes of particularly perverse violence, but nothing about it is fresh enough to haunt you in the night. It's predictable.

| Oct 11, 2012

That title is off the mark. Here's a better one: "Stupid."

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 11, 2012

An occult thriller that scares with an absolute relentlessness.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 11, 2012

"Sinister" is an undeniably scary movie, with performances adding enough human interest to give depth to the basic building blocks of horror.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 11, 2012

I knew perfectly well, after a while, what Sinister was going to scare me with. But I got scared anyway.

| Original Score: B | Oct 10, 2012

Ellison's fascination with celluloid to solve a crime recalls Antonioni's Blowup, but Scott Derrickson is unable to conjure an aura that isn't as transparent and weightless as a ghost.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 10, 2012

Enjoyably edgy fright flick meshes serial-killer and haunted house ingredients.

| Oct 10, 2012