Sinister (2012)
Ethan Hawke stars as a true crime novelist in search of his next big hit (last one was 10y ago). Now with a wife, 12y old son, and 8-10y old daughter in tow he's packed the family up and moved to yet another small town to research a family killing. The hook is that all were killed but a young child. The secret from his family is rather than just moving to the town....he bought their house. Film never drags, but is heavy with dramatic music as we get regular moments of anxiety throughout the buildup. Over the course of his research, he explores the attic and finds a box of 8mm tapes of events about once every decade or so with the most recent being when the family died. He watches it, of course, with notes like "Who is doing the filming"" and "Where is Stephanie?", the obvious audience questions. In watching the other films, each one is of a family being killed - different era, different mode of death, but all multiple homicides. He enlists a local cop (Officer So and so) who helps research them and find in all cases, a family was slain and a young child was spared but missing. The film builds well throughout, feeding you ideas and connections as we watch him sink deeper into obsession until he determines to escape and save both himself and his family from this weird string of history. He burns the films, packs up the family to leave in the middle of the night and escape. I'll stop there not to spoil it, but I'll say if you want a supernatural suspense kinda thing, it'll do reasonably well. The acting is good, Ethan carries it all pretty well and we have a cameo from Vincent D'Onofrio as a professor of occult, and Fred Thompson as your not so friendly local sheriff, though the rest of the supporting cast are not given enough screen time to matter (wife is pretty forgettable). I won't spoil it, but the ending is a bit predictable inasmuch as it can be, so if the film was cruising at an 8-9/10, the ending lost it a half point. Not horrible, just felt like they let off the gas at the end. 8/10