Film

Sinister

Sinister is a slow-building, genuinely upsetting horror about a true-crime writer who moves his family into a murder house and finds a box of Super 8 films documenting that killing, and others like it, in grainy home-movie detail. Scott Derrickson builds dread out of static and ambition rather than jump scares. It's for people who like their horror patient, grim, and a little dirty.

TMDb rating6.9

If you liked this

Insidious2011

A family moves house and the haunting follows anyway — same dread of a home turning hostile, but James Wan turns the scares up loud and theatrical rather than slow-burn creeping, with a genuinely inventive mythology behind the demon.

But It leans hard into jump scares and a busier, more maximalist third act than Sinister's patient dread — less unsettling, more of a rollercoaster.

Insidious poster

The Conjuring2013

Another writer-adjacent family-in-danger true-crime hook — this time real-life paranormal investigators drawn into a haunted farmhouse. James Wan again, but tighter, colder, and more classically built, with dread that escalates instead of exploding.

But It's more of a haunted-house ensemble piece than a character study — less interested in one man's unraveling mind than in scaring you efficiently.

The Conjuring poster

Hereditary2018

For the same slow, dread-soaked descent into a family destroyed by something ancient and cruel — Toni Collette gives one of horror's great performances, and the film commits fully to bleakness without cheap comfort.

But It's genuinely traumatic rather than fun-scary, with a final act so strange it splits audiences right down the middle.

Hereditary poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Peeping Tom1960

Both are built around the idea that filming death is itself a kind of violence — a camera that watches and kills instead of just recording.

A young cameraman films his own murders and can't stop watching the footage back — the great granddaddy of 'camera as weapon' horror, decades before found footage made it a genre, and just as clinical and cruel.

But It's a 1960 British thriller, not a horror movie in the modern sense — restrained, talky, and slow by contemporary standards, with none of the visual shocks you'd expect.

Peeping Tom poster
More like this (8)

The Babadook2014

A grieving single mother is stalked by a storybook monster that may just be her own unraveling mind — the scariest thing here is guilt, not jump scares, and it lingers long after.

But Slower and more domestic than a haunted-house shocker — patient viewers will love it, but there's little in the way of set-piece scares.

The Babadook poster

The Black Phone2022no page yet

Derrickson and Hawke reunite, this time with Hawke playing the monster — a masked child abductor haunting a suburb of missing kids, told with the same grimy '70s dread and eye for domestic menace.

But More supernatural rescue thriller than slow existential dread — it's scarier in bursts, less unsettling as a sustained mood piece.

Oculus2014no page yet

A cursed object instead of cursed footage, but the same idea that recorded images can lie and kill — siblings investigate a haunted mirror linked to their parents' deaths, with a clever fractured timeline.

But The time-jumping structure gets a little tangled by the end, and it trades atmosphere for plot mechanics more than some horror fans prefer.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring2001

A journalist investigates a cursed videotape that kills whoever watches it — the same idea of media as a vector for death, and one of the defining images of 2000s horror: that girl, that well, that static.

But It's more polished mainstream spookiness than grubby dread, and its central mystery-solving plot moves at an investigative-thriller pace rather than horror's.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring poster

Smile2022no page yet

An entity spreads by making its victims smile before they die, passed on like a curse or a virus — visually inventive dread with the same sense of an ancient evil feeding on suffering.

But It's flashier and more jump-scare reliant than genuinely dreadful, and the ending goes bigger and more literal than some will want.

Talk to Me2023

Teenagers use a cursed object to summon spirits for fun, and the fun curdles fast — same escalating dread of dabbling with something you don't understand, with a raw, low-budget nastiness.

But It's youth-culture horror with a party-movie energy early on — a very different social world than Sinister's isolated, middle-aged domestic dread.

Talk to Me poster

Zodiac2007

Both are about a man's obsessive pursuit of a case eating his sanity and his family — Sinister just adds a demon to the same true-crime rabbit hole.

Swap the supernatural for the real thing: a writer/cartoonist becomes obsessed with an unsolved case, his career and family fraying as the investigation consumes him — same descent into obsession, minus the ghost.

But It's a two-and-a-half-hour procedural with almost no scares, more interested in paperwork and dead ends than dread — a very different kind of patience is required.

Zodiac poster

The Poughkeepsie Tapes2007no page yet

Sinister's plot literally is footage of murders someone kept — this is that idea taken to its rawest, most unfiltered extreme, as a fake documentary rather than a polished thriller.

A mockumentary built entirely from a serial killer's home-movie footage of his victims — the found-footage snuff-tape premise Sinister only hints at, played completely straight and far, far nastier.

But It's grim, cheap-looking, and genuinely upsetting with none of Sinister's polish or restraint — this is horror that wants to make you feel sick, not just scared.

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Recommended by

The Conjuring, Annabelle, Insidious, Lee Cronin's The Mummy, The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity, Poltergeist, Ghostwatch