Sinister

In Scott Derrickson’s 2012 film, true crime writer Ellison moves his family into a murder house and hides that history from his wife; the fight after Tracy finds out carries the middle stretch. The scare engine is the attic projector. The reels carry harmless home movie labels such as “Pool Party ’66”, “BBQ ’79” and “Lawn Work ’86”, and each opens as ordinary family footage before cutting to a killing, so you keep watching domestic film knowing what is coming. Anyone hoping for a threat that chases the hero gets a man alone in a dark house, threading reels. Those reels really were shot on Super 8, on a camera cinematographer Chris Norr bought himself after rental gear disappointed. Derrickson licensed their music before shooting, so Christopher Young’s score had to move in and out of those tracks. Bughuul’s face came from a Flickr photograph, bought for 500 dollars. A British comparison site, broadbandchoices, ran a Science of Scare study measuring viewers’ heart rates: the film came first in 2020 and lost that place to Host a year later. A good fit if you accept the eight millimetre reels as the best material here and can sit through the slower research scenes between them. Not for viewers who will not watch staged drownings, hangings and burnings involving children.