In 2020, a scientific study was performed to determine a question horror fans have been debating since before Michael Myers was terrorizing the residents of Haddonfield, Illinois: What is the scariest movie ever made?
Called the "Science of Scare Project," the study monitored the hearts rates of 50 participants who then watched over 100 hours of horror movies. In the end, the 2012 Ethan Hawke vehicle Sinister took the top spot.
I've seen hundreds of horror movies. I've seen others get scared, such as when a woman ran screaming out of my theater with her arms waving wildly in the air at the first big jump scare in The Conjuring. I myself don't scare easily, but there are certainly exceptions. Just ask my wife about how hard I squeezed her arm when I first saw Toni Collette on the ceiling in Hereditary.
Few movies have actually freaked me out, but Sinister is one of them, and for that reason, it's deserving in my mind of being called the scariest movie ever made.
Sinister came out 13 years ago, but I can still remember watching it for the first time. It's not often I can say that, but this is a core memory. I remember that I had an early day at work and had time to kill, and so I was excited to see this new Ethan Hawke horror movie that I had heard about. I went to my local theater, got my ticket and found my seat. It turns out that I was the only one in attendance, and that set the tone for what I was getting myself into.
Sinister wastes no time in establishing its sense of dread
Sinister doesn't ease you in. The very first scene is a grainy home video of a family of four with bags over their heads. Each one has a noose around their neck, and a few seconds in, the tree limb they're tied to is sawed off, raising them into the air where they struggle and presumably all die.
Those home snuff movies are peppered throughout the movie, and each one hits because they look so real. The best part, aside from the purposeful lo-fi quality of them, is that they show you just enough to horrify, but they're not gratuitous when it comes to gore or violence. In each one, a family is killed in disturbing ways, from being burned alive in a car, to pulled into a pool while tied to lounge chairs, to having their necks slit while tied up and lying in bed.
The sense of dread these Super 8 movies instill in your gut is the reason we go see horror movies in the first place. It's enough to make you lean forward in your seat as a seemingly happy day of family fun cuts to each disturbing denouement, but when the coup de grâce is delivered, you'll be half-watching with your hands covering your eyes. The best of the bunch is "Lawn Work '86," in which we have a first-person view of someone taking a lawn mower out of the garage on a rainy night, eventually running over a person lying on the ground in one of the most effective jump scares ever put to film.
Ethan Hawke's character Ellison is a true crime author trying to recapture the glory of his last hit book, which sadly for him was published more than 10 years ago. His connection to his family has frayed as he's moved them around the country in search of inspiration, and we come to find out that not only has he brought them to this new place because of the quadruple hanging we witnessed to start the movie, he's moved them into the literal scene of the crime, unbeknownst to his wife or kids.
Once he finds a box in the attic filled with the home video film reels, the movie begins to take off as we attempt to solve these murders along with him. Each family that has been killed shares one thing in common besides having their helpless final moments committed to film: one child from each family is missing, and none have ever been found.
Let me say that I love kids. I have three of my own, and I coach two of them in soccer and volunteer at their school whenever I can. With that being said, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that gets under my skin more in a horror movie than creepy kids. Give me a haunted nursery, a dust-covered rocking horse inexplicably rocking to and fro, some creepy dolls and kids doing and saying unnatural things and you've got the recipe to give me goosebumps and a sleepless night.
The second half of Sinister is so good because it takes what begins as a murder mystery and turns it into a supernatural fright-fest in which each of the missing kids is the one responsible for killing their families, all in service of the ancient Babylonian deity Bughuul. When Ellison burns the film reels and then finds them back in the attic, this time with an extended cut that shows each child killer stepping out to shush the viewer at home as if we're meant to be accomplices in keeping this terrible secret, my blood runs cold, and that's still true on what I believe was my seventh viewing.
Sinister has a great twist and a phenomenal ending sequence that really seal it as an all-timer. Ellison had been getting help from a local yokel cop, and the officer uncovered that each of the murdered families once lived in a house belonging to a previously murdered family. After they moved, they became victims themselves. That's what triggered it. The problem for Ellison is that this information came too late, because he and his family have already gotten out of Dodge, sealing their fate.
Ellison soon realizes that his coffee has been drugged by his daughter Ashley, who has come under Bughuul's control. As he twists on the floor helplessly, we see Ashley, who can't be more than 8 or 9 years old, dragging an axe across the floor before saying, "Don't worry Daddy, I'll make you famous again." What a great line, one of my favorites in all of horror. They say to be careful what you wish for, and Ellison found that out in the bleakest ending imaginable.
Sinister stays with you long after the final shot
Going back to my first viewing, I watched the entire movie in that empty theater, then got up to leave when the credits rolled while feeling pretty shaken. Shortly after the movie started, I remembered taking my keys out of my pocket because they were poking my leg. I put them in the cup holder, but I forgot to grab them when the movie ended.
I realized my mistake when I got to the lobby. I went back to get them, and the theater was still dark and still empty. I was so freaked out that once I got in the door I sprinted to my seat, grabbed my keys, and sprinted back out. Nobody saw me, but if they had they would have been wondering what was wrong with this guy. Could Bughuul have been waiting in that theater for me? Better safe than sorry. I have no regrets.
I was sweating when I got outside, not from the running but from the unshakable fear that had stayed with me through the end of the movie. Watching it again tonight, it still hit all the same notes, except now with the added layer that I have an 8-year-old daughter. Could she drug my coffee and then dismember me with an axe? You know what, I'd rather not think about that as I sit alone in my dark house at 2 in the morning. Thanks Sinister.