Sinister 

Harvested from a host of horror film cadavers, this frightener from director Scott Derrickson is engrossing, effective and just plain scary. Ellison Osborne (Ethan Hawke, top-notch), a true-crime novelist, moves his family into the site of a recent family hanging hoping to pen a return to past acclaim. When Ellison stumbles across Super-8 film capturing it and several decades of similar slaughters, it triggers a chain reaction of chills and things that go bump in the night. With a gripping opening shot that sets a paralyzing tone, Derrickson channels The Shining, The Ring, Saw, the found-footage subgenre and many other influences, but he also makes smart use of camera angles and framing to concoct scares both actual and perceived. By Neil Morris