SINISTER

Ethan Hawke seems like an interesting dude. His filmography is a winding road of iconic roles, phenomenal performances, indie darlings, horror hits, and absolute trash. If I had to start making a movie tomorrow, Ethan Hawke is one of the few great actors I feel like I’d have a real shot at casting. How the heck would I get in contact with Edward Norton? I couldn’t convince Gary Oldman to do jack shit. But Ethan Hawke? I reckon he’d hear me out.

Ethan - and now that he’s agreed to star in my new film I can call him Ethan - also stars in Sinister, a pretty creepy popcorn horror movie from Blumhouse. Sinister is one of those catch-all titles that could belong to any horror movie. In the movie Ethan plays a true-crime writer who finds a bunch of old film in the attic of his new family home. All of the footage is of other families being killed, seemingly by one of the children in the family (twist: there’s actually a demonic presence at work).

There’s a sequel out there to Sinister, which is so awful. This first one is rock solid, full of jump scares, and Ethan Hawke doing good acting stuff. But the sequel? Golly. I don’t even know where to begin. There’s a reason the Sinisterfranchise didn’t take off like the Paranormal Activities, the Insidious’s or The Purges. They were all made by Blumhouse, they were all cheap as chips, and one of them even also starred Ethan Hawke. But they all ran on to become multi-million dollar horror franchises and Sinister stalled at the first sequel.

I’m obsessed with the production methods of Blumhouse horror movies. Have a good hook, get a name actor to take a pay cut by giving them a chunk of the backend, keep costs low, and make a fortune. Sinister cost $3 million and made $87 million. Once you start thinking about how they kept the costs so low you can’t get it out of your head. Ethan Hawke never really leaves the house in this movie. Other movies would probably have him pop to the shops at some point. Not Sinister. There’s even a part where he chats to Vincent D’Onofrio about the origin of the demonic spirit, but where other movies might have made that scene somewhat visually interesting, or have it take place in a park, or even get the two actors in a room together, old corner-cutting Blumhouse has Ethan make a video call to Vincent and we watch them chat to each other via Zoom.

Where would I fit into Sinister? Personally, I’d love to stay as far away from the murder house and that demon Bughuul (who sounds like a vape company) as possible, so it is handy that Ethan interacts with most other characters via phone calls and video links. I can sit safely in the confines of my own home and chat via video call with my author pal, Ellison Oswalt (yeah, Ethan’s character’s name is Ellison Oswalt, the only name in the movie more ridiculous than Bughuul).

IF I WERE IN 'SINISTER' I WOULD: NEVER GET AROUND TO IT