Sinister

Boozy true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is desperate for another bestseller, so he uproots his long-suffering family and relocates them to a suburban house where another family was sacrificed in a sinister ritual. Of course, he doesn’t clue his wife in to that li’l bit of info. But ol’ Oswalt is pretty short on clues himself, seeing how he finds a box of 8mm home movies and a projector up in the attic—a box that wasn’t there before they moved in—and still stays put. Oswalt is so desperate to resurrect his career that he decides to go with the flow, even after he realizes that the found footage is not just of the prior family being snuffed, but also a few other families scattered across the map. All this ends up pretty much as you’d expect it to end. Fans of stupid horror films might be impressed by this butt-numbing Frankenstein of faux snuff footage and wannabe J-horror. But I found the whole thing to be boring, derivative and kind of ludicrous. Cinemark 14, Feather River Cinemas and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated R.