Ethan Hawke stars as a writer of true-story crime books who is working on a book about a family of four who hung themselves. To get close to his subject he moves his own family into the victims’ house (with his wife and two kids unaware of the house’s history). He then discovers a box of Super 8 film along with a projector in the attic. Each reel of film shows the camera operator killing an entire family, one of the reels showing the subjects of the book he’s writing getting hung on the tree outside. Events only get creeper when Ethan discovers a demon named Bughuul is visible in the camera footage hiding in the background. What probably most impressed me about this film was the sound design which evokes an eerie animalistic vibe that heightens the horror. In many ways I’d celebrate this one as a classic work of scary perfection but unfortunately director Scott Derrickson and writers Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill make a big mistake and over explain the monster and so take away the mystery element of the tale. Still I recommend it because regardless of its unnecessary ending it’s a ghoulish good time. Grade: B+
Spoiler Talk
They didn’t need to show us Bughuul so much at the end. And the weird gimmick with the children all appearing up on screen and Ashley joining them was completely unnecessary and left me more annoyed than in awe. Less is more and in this situation they had already done such a brilliant job following this rule they didn’t need to anything else. This film should have just ended with the Ashley killing her father and that’s it. Darn, it’s too bad I can’t erase that epilogue from my memory.
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