Horror Challenge #50: "Sinister"

This is a movie that had a lot of hype surrounding it for me before I even got a chance to see it.  A few of my friends were so scared by the movie that they had to leave the room, so I was kind of dreading watching it while being excited to see it at the same time, and hoping it lived up to the hype.  The verdict is that it was a good movie and very well made, but not as scary as I expected.

The movie stars Ethan Hawke as a writer who moves his family to a small town and into the house where another family was murdered so that he can investigate the case and write a book about it.  As soon as he moves in, strange things start happening (and of course he's too dumb to realize that this is a very BAD SIGN) and he soon discovers that this murder case may be connected to many others throughout the years, and there's a component of the supernatural at work here (which of course he doesn't believe in, despite truckloads of evidence to the contrary, because like I mentioned, he's a GENIUS). 

I don't want to give anything away, because I think the plot had a lot of cool ideas and more originality than I've seen in awhile.  I figured all the twists out long before they were revealed (because of my highly honed observational skills and because I've seen a zillion horror movies before) but even knowing what was going to happen, it was still compelling to watch because I liked this guy and his family.  The characters were very well drawn.  My only complaint, besides guessing what was going on, was that the movie didn't scare me as much as I thought it might (meaning it didn't leave me in a terror induced coma) but now that the movie is over with and the lights are off, I find myself acutely aware of every creepy noise in the house around me, so maybe this will be one of those movies that takes awhile to take effect but ends up putting me in therapy for years to come.  Either way, this was a great movie and I loved every minute.