Isaac Reeder

SINISTER

The film Sinister is an Action/Adventure horror film released in October 12th 2012. The

director is called Scott Derrickson, the producers are called Jason Blum and Brian

Kavanaugh-Jones, and the executive producers are Scott Derrickson and Charles Layton.

The film opens by Ellison Oswald and the rest of his family are moving into their new house,

supposeabley the family who lived there last had been murdered and this sparks off his new

novel he will write. He discovers a box in the attic which holds tapes of the last family’s

murders and he becomes determined to solve the mystery. A man named Bagul, who lives

within these tapes and photos, and is also known as the eater of children’s souls. His own

children then become witnesses to Bagul and begin to be overtaken by his demons.

The narrative structure for Sinister follows Tzvetan Todorov’s narrative structure for films.

The Equilibrium at the start of the film is that the family are moving into a new house with a

fresh start, and hopefully a new best-selling novel for Ellison. The disruption within the film

is that Ellison finds the box of films up in his attic; this breaks the normality of the family’s

new house and has an effect on the environment. His thwarted attempts failed as he

watched all the tapes and got in contact with the deputy, but gets nowhere. He then finds

his children doing strange things, the girl drawing the past family over the walls, and his son

screaming in a box. Eventually his resolution is to burn the box filled with tapes and player.

Ellison then finds glowing green liquid in his Coffee, who then passes out, waking up to

himself, his wife and son being bound and gagged. Bagul then taking his little girl, Ashley,

and takes her into the film. It follows the theory perfectly apart from there being no

resolution with a happy ending, but being a horror film I wouldn’t expect a resolution to

happen.

Sinister’s horror genre title would be a Supernatural horror. The typical Supernatural horror

film portrays death, afterlife, the devil and evil. Within Sinister you discover that most of

these are included within the film if you look close enough. In terms of the history of the

genre, the film fits in well with all the other Supernatural films made, the brackets are all

met considering the storyline of the film and what is included, it has been well thought out.

The characters within the film follow a normal pattern of which would usually be included.

The family who move into the new house consists of A Husband & Wife, and a little boy and

girl. The fathers name is Ellison, the Wife is called Tracy, the daughter is called Ashley and

the little boy is Trevor. The main demonic character that the film is based around is the soul-

snatcher Bagul, who targets Ellison’s two children who eventually become exposed to his

threats. Bagul is obviously the traditional Villain and has all the right features to play the

part such as the scary facial features, all black clothes, creepy, eerie videos, and his ability to

control the souls of children. The hero of the film is the father of the family, Ellison. He

begins to take advantage of Bagul’s story to write a best-selling novel, but when he

discovers the tapes he is in a constant battle in keeping his family together and discovering

Isaac Reeder

what Bagul does and how to end it. Unfortunately the hero is unsuccessful in his attempts

and does not follow the usual flow of films, it ends with him losing his daughter to Bagul

while the rest of his family is tied up.The binary opposition of Sinister is definitely Good vs.

Evil. Ellison is trying to banish Bagul and understand what and why he is doing what he does,

Bagul is watching his family’s every move, waiting to pounce at the right time. Eventually he

is successful and evil triumphs over good.

Overall I think that Sinister is a success. It follows the usual concepts of Horror/Supernatural

Horror. The story line fits in well with the traditional films and also provides a very good

watch and a few scares too. The characters fit the typical bill of the horror tradition and has

the viewers focused on the children and what will happen next. The main horror character

too is a typical character, scary, ghoulish and a soul catcher, the particular abilities that

Bagul has too also entices the viewer in my opinion. A scary supernatural horror film at its

best.