Sinister is the story of Ellison Oswalt, a true crime writer, and his family as they move to a famous "murder house" for him to write his new book -- one that he hopes will put his name back at the top of the charts after a few years off it. While living in the home, his daughter Ashley begins to act strangely. Ellison also discovers a cache of Super 8 footage that shows the truth behind the murders in the house -- and other murders.
On the surface, this is probably one of the best ghost/supernatural monster stories to come out in years, and it (at least for me) was "scare the crap out of you" creepy. Nightmare-inducingly so.
Beneath that surface, as we see Oswalt's struggle with his writing history and his new book, the movie has a lot to say about how we writers exist from book to book and how we are constantly needing to be and do more.
Ten years ago, Ellison had a huge hit true crime book, one that helped shift the direction of a case and get the killer caught and brought to justice. But since? Crickets. Not only that, but he wrote a book that actually helped a killer go free.
So, to say he is living with issues is one hell of an understatement.
We Write Because We Have To
As writers we all have different catalysts for beginning to write, but ultimately we all keep writing for the same reason. We write because we are writers. We write because that's the action word that defines us. We write because we are driven to keep doing it.
There are always thousands of other action words we could do -- cook, clean, manage, wait tables, code, etc. -- you name it, but because writing is the infection of choice, it's the thing we chase, the thing we do.
