Yesterday I read this essay by William Blake, a man who has been held in solitary confinement for 26 years for the murder of a police officer. It's beautifully written, but heartbreaking.
    There are two types of people who could read this and not be persuaded this type of treatment should be abolished. First, the people close to the victim. They may not be able to forgive the murderer. That's understandable. I could see grief making me wish someone burned in hell forever and, like Blake says, to think the fire wasn't hot enough. I feel sorry for people like this.
    The other type is the person with abstract convictions that override any residual humanitarian feelings. People like the judge who sentenced Blake, who said, "You deserve an eternity in hell." These people are dangerous and should never hold any position related to public service.

I read this headline from the L.A. Times and thought, That's a cruel joke on the pessimists. Those who think life is rotten will get the most of it.
But the use of the word is misleading. Pessimism here means cautious, or wearily conservative, like the defunct stereotype of a banker. They don't mean philosophical pessimism, which views the universe as a malignant turd.
I'd like to see a study on that.

Sinister came out last fall. I was intrigued by the trailer. It had a good lead actor, occult themes, and the villain looked like the singer of a black metal band. I wanted to see it then, but it didn't show at either of the beer-serving theaters within bicycle distance of my home. So I forgot about it until Netflix reminded me.

But I had one reservation. The producers brought us another film with a similar title: Insidious. (The voice in my head as I read these titles belongs to Vincent Price.)

Insidious has a few admirable qualities and creepy visuals, but ultimately it's a hodgepodge of horror ideas with a plot that relies on a child in danger and a husband struggling to hold his family together.

Sinister stars Ethan Hawke as, yes, a father struggling to hold his family together. If he can publish a bestseller his wife won't take the kids and move in with her sister. As plot glue, the family-saving husband usually does nothing for me. But it worked for me in this case, I think, because Ethan Hawke does a really good acting job with a stock horror-film character.

The film opens with a ghastly Super 8 film of a family being hanged from a tree. Next we see Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) and family moving into the same house. Maybe we're not supposed to know it's the same house until a few minutes later when Oswalt looks out the back window at the (gasp!) hanging tree, but, come on.

So, Oswalt is in town to write about the murders and a missing girl. He moves his family into the murder house but fails to inform his wife of this fact. He finds a box of Super 8 film in the attic that shouldn't be there. The film cans have innocuous titles written in Sharpie: "Pool Party," "BBQ," etc. But they're actually snuff films of families being murdered, including the family that lived in the same house. Some of the families are murdered in annoyingly complicated ways. In one, family members are duct taped to patio furniture and pulled by ropes into the pool. Oswalt watches these in dark while chugging whisky. He has a moment where almost tells the police, but then decides against it. A serial killer is sneaking into his home and putting snuff films in his attic–what a scoop!

At this point some people might lose any sympathy for Oswalt. But I bought it, mostly due to Hawke's ability to make his character seem real despite hokey situations. Also this may explain why writers are such useful characters in horror movies. Writers tend to have more moral flexibility. The writer's creed is "Murder your darlings." When Oswalt decides not to inform the police of his find and risks his family's lives for the sake of a story, I said to myself, "He's a true writer!"

I'm reminded of John Gardner in On Becoming a Novelist when he told the story of coming upon an accident scene. He stopped to help a bleeding woman out a burning car. Despite the urgency he found himself grateful to be having such a rich and useful experience to add to his writing arsenal. Gardner wasn't proud or ashamed of this, he was just making an observation.

So the plot goes on. There's a ghoul in the films, and an occult symbol. And in all the murders a child was missing. A professor informs Oswalt that the symbol is for an ancient Mesopotamian god that was said to live in images and steal children. The original bogeyman. The film projector plays by itself, children in Halloween make-up start running around the house but Oswalt can't see them, he burns the film and projector but they come back, and eventually what you knew would happen happens.

The ancient god, Bagul, looks like this:

Pretty much any black metal dudes look like this:

Sinister has pretty cool music. There's interesting guitar work and it goes well with the images. But I would like to have seen how the Super 8 films played without music. Just silent films like they would be for the character. There's no reason why there would be an orchestra hit when Bagul shows up on screen. But that's a problem I have with most movies–too much music.

Sinister would've been cooler if there were a cult that worshiped Bagul, and they were responsible for the murders. Not Bagul himself. After Oswalt burns the films and projector and moves his family back to their old house, he finds the same box in the attic. So Bagul, ancient Mesopotamian god who steals children and lives in images of him, travels via teleportation in a cardboard box labeled "Home Movies?"

Sinister has something at the end that I hate, and I hope we've seen the last of it, along with strobe filters, Matrix-style fight scenes and slow-motion shots of guys jumping while shooting two pistols: it's the evil head-tilt. You know when the killer looks at the camera. He tilts his head in a gesture of sociopathic curiosity. Like, "Funny how this meat sack struggles so before I remove its intestines."

Summary: Not too terrible. Starts strong. Good acting. Falls apart into nonsense. Stupid head tilt.

Favorite Part: Cameo by Tavis Smiley.