Sinister, review - Telegraph The wearisome boom in "found footage" horror films that started in 1999 with The Blair Witch Project shows little sign of abating. But it is wittily and often terrifyingly subverted in Sinister, an old-fashioned, torch-under-the-chin ghost story in which true-crime author and father of two Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) actually does find a box of footage in his attic. These dusty Super 8 reels depict hangings, drownings, slashings and burnings and Ellison, who needs another hit, thinks he may have stumbled on to a serial killer story. In fact, the footage depicts ritual sacrifices made in the name of a demon called Bughuul, and when Ellison projects them, all manner of unpleasantness ensues. Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror are two obvious influences here, and director Scott Derrickson uses all of the old tension-building tricks - from empty space and long takes to deafening bumps in the night. Sinister's central idea - that film can itself be evil - is not developed as cleverly as it was in Hideo Nakata's Ring films, but its images are chillingly memorable, from Bughuul's face captured on grainy 8mm to a ladder to the attic, lit from above and glowing like a spectral film strip.