FAQ

Vincent played the role as a favour to his friend Ethan, popping down for half a day to shoot footage on a laptop for the film. He says it was just for a bit of fun, hence not needing credit.

Mr Boogie is supernatural; He can kidnap a child, and escape into a movie image projected onto the wall, and he can make a child from 1966 (and the 70s, and the 80s) STAY a child until 2012. Why would restoring a few film reels be a problem?

True crime author Ellison "Ell" Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is investigating (and planning to write a non-fiction book about) the murders of four members of the Stevenson family (there was a fifth, a young girl named Stephanie, but she appears to have gone missing) who were simultaneously hanged from a tree branch in the backyard of the house into which Ellison and his family—wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance), son Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario), and daughter Ashley (Clare Foley)—have just moved. Shortly after moving in, Ellison finds in the attic a box containing a movie projector and rolls of 8mm home movies, all bearing innocent labels such as "Sleepy Time '98", "BBQ 79", or "Pool Party '66" but all showing families being hideously murdered. As he watches the film and continues with his investigation, Ellison comes to learn that there is a Babylonian deity, identified as Bughuul (Nicholas King), influencing the killer(s). When Bughuul begins terrorizing Ellison and his family, Ell must find out what it is and how to get rid of it.

Sinister was filmed from a screenplay written by American screenwriters Scott Derrickson (who also directed) and C. Robert Cargill based on a nightmare that Cargill had after seeing The Ring (2002). In the nightmare, he discovered a film in his attic depicting the hanging of an entire family. Sinister was followed by Sinister 2 (2015).

In the movie, Bughuul (aka Mr Boogie) is depicted as an obscure Babylonian deity who kidnaps and "eats" the souls of children. He resides in a realm separate from the mortal realm but can gain access to the mortal world when people look at him in pictures, such as those on film. In reality, there doesn't appear to be any actual deity named Bughuul (or Bagul) in Babylonian (or any other) mythology. However, deities/demons as the eaters of children is a common thread through many ancient mythologies, e.g., Jewish (Lilith and Abyzou), Coptic Egypt (Alabasandria), Byzantine Gello, Greek (Lamia), Slavic (Ala), Roman (Saturn), among many others.

A snuff film is a movie in which a person or persons are actually murdered.

It's never mentioned what the substance is exactly, but Oswalt mentions to Deputy So&So that the toxicology reports from the families all showed that the killer(s) had drugged the victims. In the "Pool Party" and "Sleepytime" films, glowing green stuff is seen in glasses before the victims are killed. In "Lawn Work", the girl serves her parents drinks, implying that she's drugging them.

They would not be marked for murder since there's no child that could carry out the killings, but Bughuul would probably still scare them out of the house to ensure a family with children could move in.

Super 8 is a film format from 1965, invented by the Eastman Kodak photographic company although companies such as Fujifilm, Pro8mm and Agfa that also manufacture Super 8 reversal and negative films. The film stock is called "Super 8" because it's nearly the same as 8mm film stock except that the sprocket holes in the film go vertically rather than horizontally, creating a larger "super" capturing space. Unfortunately use and processing of Super 8, as well as other motion photography film stock forms, are a dying art because the digital age has just about made them obsolete, but film enthusiasts, hobbyists and professional directors who want their movies to have a "retro nostalgic" look will still often use Super 8 because of its bright colours, film grain and unique appearance that digital cameras as of yet can mimic but not really create.

There are several films similar to Sinister, most notably The Ring (2002), the movie that inspired Sinister. Girly (1970), the Goosebumps two-part TV movie "Welcome to Deadhouse" (1997) (Part 1 and Part 2), Session 9 (2001), Super 8 (2011) and The Babadook (2014) all share very similar themes and ideas to Sinister. In addition, Syndrome E (2022) and The Rheinsberg Tapes may prove to be similar.