While box office numbers of course explain a movie's success, there's one other fact to consider and that's how critics feel about it. In a perfect world, a film will make a lot of money and will bring in rave reviews and audiences will enjoy it as well. But what about when a movie is beloved by fans but has a Rotten Tomatoes rating that is lower than people might expect?
Sinister was released in 2012 and written by C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson, who also co-wrote 2022's The Black Phone. Ethan Hawke stars as Ellison Oswalt, a writer who moves into a horribly haunted house with dark secrets that come to ruin his life. It turns out that Sinister doesn't have a very high Rotten Tomatoes rating and this suggests a divide between what audiences and critics thought of the horror movie.
Sinister and The Black Phone have much in common, including child characters who are facing terrible evil and eerie houses. But while The Black Phone has a rating of 83% on the Tomatometer and an 88% Audience Score, Sinister has much lower ratings of 63% and 62%. This is definitely confusing given how beloved the film is and how solid the performances, storytelling, and villain are. When fans of the genre think about the most terrifying movies, Sinister comes up often. The villain of the story is, for one thing, absolutely horriying and memorable, thanks to his stringy hair and dark eyes and, yes, sinister feeling.
The snippets of critics' reviews on Sinister's Rotten Tomatoes page share what some thought while reviewing the film, and several critics found Ethan Hawke's character to be silly. The general feeling is that the movie isn't unique enough to stand out and that it includes horror tropes found in many other films. The low Rotten Tomatoes score for Sinister proves the divide between audiences and critics as the flaws that critics found are exactly why fans like it so much. It's possible to argue that Sinister is a near perfect horror film and one of the most popular Blumhouse horror movies. Sinister movie succeeds on three levels: storytelling structure, the terrible villain, and Hawke's protagonist.
The structure of Sinister makes perfect sense and allows audiences to go on a thrilling journey. While this structure does use haunted house horror movie tropes, that feels okay here since there wouldn't be another way to tell the story and it doesn't take away from the movie's impact. Ellison and his wife and kids move into a new home that turns out to have a horrible history. He begins researching as he's a true crime writer and learns that a demon killed the family who lived there before. As is possible to predict from the moment that this becomes apparent, the demon takes over Ellison's young daughter and kills the whole family, resulting in a dark and tragic conclusion. The movie also does a good job showing Ellison's horrified expression when watching the tapes featuring the deaths of the house's previous residents.
The Black Phone's villain The Grabber is definitely as creepy as he's meant to be, yet at the same time, it's possible to say that he leaves audiences wanting more. The same thing can't be said of Bughuul, who couldn't possibly be scarier to look at or imagine coming into contact with. Sinister has a flawless villain who possesses children and then convinces them that they should murder their family. That is absolutely chilling and it's hard to argue with that fact.
While some critics think that Ellison makes bad decisions and that he isn't an intelligent person, as of course people would wonder why he doesn't move his family out of the house at the first sign of trouble, this seems to be an unfair criticism. Some horror movie main characters are more fun to watch than others because they are so clever. But for the most part, characters have to make choices that might not make total sense because they're active participants in a scary story that requires them to ignore red flags and warning signs.
The reviews of Sinister might not have been all great, but the movie was a success at the box office. While it wasn't one of the highest-grossing Blumhouse horror movies, it did gross $82,515,113 worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Horror fans consider this movie a favorite thanks to the creepy demon and there's also the fact that Sinister is considered one of the scariest horror movies according to science. This is a perfect example of how sometimes, audiences enjoy something that might not be a critical favorite, and there's definitely a lot about Sinister that is impressive.