‘Sinister’ just bland tedium

Ethan Hawke plays true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt in â€œSinister.â€ (Summit Entertainment)

There are three ways to generate scares in a horror film — smart writing, a creepy filming style or an interesting creature. The better these elements, the better the film.

“Sinister” fails on all three counts.

Let’s start with the writing. Ethan Hawke, who once had a promising career, plays true-crime writer Ellison Oswalt. He’s so hungry to regain the fame and fortune he had with a major best-seller 10 years ago that he’s willing to move his family into a house where the previous tenants were hung from a tree in the backyard.

The screenplay by director Scott Derrickson is so thin that most of the painfully long movie is spent watching Oswalt walk up and down the halls of his new home. At least 30 minutes consists of him hearing a noise, going to that spot, finding nothing and then hearing another noise.

There’s also a huge chunk of time spent with Oswalt watching home movies of the previous owners being killed — along with some other related gruesome deaths. The repeated showing of the home movies is not scary and mostly torturous for the audience.

‘Sinister’

DIRECTED BY: Scott Derrickson

STARRING: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Dalton Thompson and Michael Hall D’Addario

RATED: R

GRADE: D-

RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes

Derrickson is equally uninspired with the way the movie is shot. Most of the scenes are so dark that there’s no concern for the characters. What’s more perplexing is why they just don’t turn on the lights.

Even the setting is blasé. Houses in horror films need to have character and a lot of nooks and crannies for ghouls to play. The house in “Sinister” looks like a model home — from its very geometric design to the lack of decorations. There’s no sense that anyone lives in the house.

Derrickson switches from standard styles of filming to hand-held shots for no apparent reason. Derrikson’s choice of shots is as random as the Hawke character’s long walks through the bland house.

Then there’s the creature. Eventually, the story stumbles onto rather traditional horror film elements. Revealing too much about the instruments of all of this destruction would create major spoilers. But it’s just an appalling way to try to create an emotional connection to what’s a lifeless story.

And the closest thing to a scare is when Derrickson has the creature jump into a scene accompanied by a loud sound. Yes, it startles. But being startled and scared are not the same.

“Sinister” is a forgettable mess.