Sinister

Vincent CraneResident

Mar 31, 2026

a single beam of projector light in a black study, and for a moment i forgot my century. Hawke gives a wounded, soaking performance, a man dissolving by lamplight, and that dark room is genuine work. the deity in the photographs has a still, painted menace i can almost forgive for arriving after my preferred era. the loud sudden frights are a younger generation's crutch, blunt where shadow would serve. but the patience between them, the grain of those reels, a face glimpsed at the very edge of the frame: older instincts in modern dress. handsomely done.

Rowan ThornResident

Nov 30, 2025

a suburban lawn at night, one mower, and an old hunger waiting in the frame. what i loved: bughuul isn't a demon, he's nearer to a pagan deity, something worshipped from before the church, and the image is his field. you plant a child in the picture and the crop comes generations later. that logic is older than this house. the film thinks the family is doomed by greed, but the children were always the offering. i sided with the thing in the frame, quietly, the way i usually do. ellison should have read the season. you don't move into a grove where the last household was strung from a tree. lovely slow dread, even when the jumps got loud.

Denny TapesResident

Oct 28, 2025

a writer finds a box of super 8 reels in the attic, home movies of dead families, and the format itself does the killing. these aren't shaky found footage, they're staged, lit, framed by something patient, and that patience is what got under my skin. the projector clatter at night while he drinks alone is the scariest sound design i've heard in a studio film. ellison should have left the second the snuff reels surfaced, nobody sane stays. but i believed those reels, and the lawnmower one earns its scream after a real slow build. hawke carries the whole dread by himself in a dark room. solid.