In the year 2023, with the internet being accessible to just about everyone around the world, you would think that we have all become savvy consumers. We’ve had products and services of all kinds thrown at us from every conceivable medium, many of which are “backed by science” to boast their effectiveness.
Whether we take the grabby marketing phrase genuinely or with a grain of salt is another matter. A popular 2020 study called “The Science of Scares” by Broadband Choices dubbed 2012’s Sinister as the scientifically scariest film of all-time, based on the heart rates of participants who were subjected to hours upon hours of movies from all corners of the genre.
Even though Sinister would go on to be dethroned by Host in follow-up studies in 2021 and 2022, and now sits in the number two spot, a few community members on the r/horror subreddit have called bogus on just how great the movie actually is. Just because it succeeds in elevating your heart rate, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any good – says u/HoldBirdHamburg, who calls the story “generic and predictable.”
The author’s spicy take was met with a mixed bag of responses, with some agreeing with their sentiment, while others thought he was flat out wrong, saying it’s pretty good as far as modern horror films are concerned.
The consensus over on Rotten Tomatoes is equally mixed, with scores for the former “scariest film of all-time” from both audiences and critics hovering in the mid 60 percent range. Not quite “Certified Fresh,” but certainly not an overrated pile of garbage. Whether you like it or not, horror fans have agreed in the past that it contains the best jump scare to come out of a Blumhouse production.
Sinister stars Ethan Hawke as a true crime author who ends up getting more than he bargained for when he digs deep into a murder case, which he discovers goes as far back as the 1960’s. You can judge its fright factor for yourself, seeing as it’s currently streaming on HBO Max.