Taking cues from such horror heavyweights as The Shining and Rosemary’s Baby, filmmaker Scott Derrickson knows the most effective kind of terror -- the kind that haunts a viewer’s mind and causes sleepless nights – comes not necessarily from the moments that try to be scary or shocking, but from the more dramatic aspects of the story.

He takes that notion, along with co-writer C. Robert Cargill, and constructs Sinister, a crafty little horror film that never quite manages to get all the horror logic right, but is, nonetheless, an effective creepy little film.

Working from the premise that a rift in the family is a universal trigger for guttural horror, Derrickson and Cargill build their story around true-crime novelist Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), a man struggling with his ego as he tries to climb back atop the pinnacle of literary achievement. Ellison found tremendous success earlier in his career and is attempting another bite of fame when he moves himself and his family into a home that was the scene of a mass murder in which the entire family was hanged from a large tree in the home’s backyard. Ellison hopes that being close to the crime scene will lead him to the next In Cold Blood. But there’s a flaw in his plan. Ellison doesn’t inform his wife Tracy (big screen newcomer Juliet Rylance) of the house’s history.

Not surprisingly, wonky stuff begins to happen in the house almost immediately, including the unexplained appearance of an old dusty box in the attic containing several reels of 8mm film and a projector on which to watch them.

Even Ellison, despite a hardened defense brought about by his years of studying crimes and the horrible people who commit them, is shocked at what he sees as the scratchy film is projected onto a draped sheet. As images of drownings, throat-slittings, burnings, and even the ritualized hanging in his own backyard flicker across the screen, Ellison begins to realize he may have gone a bit too far, especially when he notices a pale satanic figure lurking in the background of each movie clip.

Before he is able to piece together some of the common aspects of the murder that took place in his backyard and the ones revealed in the movies, Ellison’s son (Michael Hall D'Addario) begins having night terrors while his daughter (Clare Foley) paints spooky little images on the walls of her bedroom. Naturally, as his wife comes unglued when their new home’s history is revealed, Ellison starts to hit the bottle when the pressure mounts.

While Derrickson and Cargill show the necessary understanding of what makes the best kind of horror by effectively playing with what we don’t see, rather than what we do -- bumps, off-kilter camera shots, and brief glimpses of things that happen just off screen -- they sometimes hinder that notion by showing us a bit too much during the film’s third act. In fact, some of the money shots are held long enough for us to give the ghouls a close examination of make-up and costuming skills. Certainly not what they had intended. Additionally, the casual dialogue between family members quite often seems a bit forced and unnatural, which causes us to question the strength of the husband-wife relationship when that strong familial bond is needed to reinforce the story of a good man’s poor decision and the effect it has on his family.

And then there’s the stupid-people-making-boneheaded-moves-in-horror-movies problem. This movie is full of them. A man’s belief that he can conquer the biggest of the night’s demons with a swig of whiskey, a flashlight, and a baseball bat gets frequently reinforced here. But even so, there’s enough good stuff in there, including plenty of frightening atmosphere strengthened by a menacing score that often mimics the clackety-clack of a vintage 8mm projector, for the film to rise above its shortcomings. As the credits roll, and we slowly peel our white-knuckled hands from the armrests, we realize that Sinister works in spite of its many flaws.

(Released by Lionsgate Films and rated "R" for disturbing violent images and some terror.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.