Sinister, a film directed by Scott Derrickson, is a horror film about a “boogie” man who possesses children to kill their families. Haunting children through film, the boogie man eventually brings them to his realm of evil if the child can sacrifice their family. As gruesome and sadistic it is to the viewer, this movie has been praised for its attention to detail. No other horror cinema has been able to simultaneously captivate and cower the viewer at the same time, yet this film pulls it off. Sinister is such as successful horror movie due to its erie atmosphere and extremely evil themes.

Childhood is the most innocent stage of someone’s life. Oblivious to the negativity in the world, the child seems to always be happy. No problems, no cares, only positivity. What if these children were to become something more evil than the world itself, and this childhood innocence is spoiled out of proportion? This is where Sinister shines as a horror film. It takes innocence and turns it into evil. In the musty, dark, and dreaded attic of the main protagonist lies a bunch of film reels. All have this cute sharpie writing labeling each film, with messy packaging only a child could prepare. Various stick figure families are drawn around the reels, with crimson blood speckles scattered around them. Once these films play, distorted, almost screeching music plays in the background as each family is getting brutally murdered. At the end of each film, the child appears in front of the camera, hands covered in blood, eyes filled with death, staring right into your soul. They lift a finger to their mouths, urging you to be quiet, creating a sense of panic that the unknown might be worse than what was just witnessed. These are children that are running over their parents with lawn mowers, hanging them from trees, and drowning them in pools. These are children that are becoming consumed by some sinister entity, forcing them into actions unimaginable to most adults. The “momma’s boys” and “daddy’s little helper’s” are becoming the sadistic ends to their parents’ lives. The whole absence of moral within the film really makes it eerier than other movies in the genre. Moralistic films don’t litter their walls with bloody handprints and satanic symbols. Moralistic films don’t show the last bits of life rush out of a family as their youngest child murders them. Once the protagonist’s child mutualates the whole family, the audience soon realizes that this is an endless cycle of hopelessness, only waiting for the next person to move into that house and find an innocent box of battered film reels seemingly put together by children...

Due to its evil themes and intriguing plot, Sinister has become of of the most successful horror films of the decade. Instead of relying on cheap jump scares and shallow plots, Sinister really gets into the head of the audience. On top of a few sleepless nights, it really challenges the ideas on innocence and childhood. It makes you re-evaluate your own and question if everything you did was as you thought, or if an out of body entity was possibly influencing some of your devious little decisions. Psychologically, Sinister is one of the scariest experiences to date.