In today’s video, we will go through the events of 2012’s Documentary Crime; Sinister.
Spoilers ahead! You have been warned. Make sure to give this video a thumbs up, comment
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Ellison Oswalt is a famous true-crime author. He has just moved into a new home with his
wife Tracy, son Trevor, and daughter Ashley. As the couple is unboxing their belongings,
the town’s sheriff arrives at the front of the house. Ellison’s last two True Crime
books had flopped. The book’s influence has also caused one of the criminals to set
free. The sheriff knows this, so he warns Ellison to go back to his old house and leave
the town alone. Ellison politely asks the sheriff to leave and comes back inside.
On his way in, Tracy asks him if they have moved into a house near a crime scene again.
Ellison lies and says no. But in reality, Ellison chose this specific house because
it is associated with an unsolved crime. A few years ago, a family of five, the Stevenson
family, lived in the house. Everyone from the family except for the youngest daughter,
Stephanie, was murdered. They were hung from a tree outside. Stephani, however, went missing
after the incident and was never found. Ellison hopes to find out more about the house and
the family to write about them in his next book.
After his talk with the Sheriff, Ellison goes to the backyard and sees the same tree the
family was hung on. Later, he goes to the house’s attic to unload the boxes from the
move. The loft is empty except for a single box on its floor. Curious, Ellison puts the
other boxes aside and opens the singular box. Inside is a projector and several reels. The
reels seem to be of family events marked with different names. Ellison brings the box downstairs.
At dinner that night, Trevor complains about being bullied by the kids at his school because
of Ellison’s books. Tracy is worried about the impact of Ellison’s stories on the kids.
She warns Ellison never to leave the doors to his office open. Ellison and Tracy have
a chat when Tracy tells him that she feels like his hit book, Kentucky blood, was his
15 minutes of fame and that he should consider some other job now. Ellison asks Tracy for
some time to finish this last book. Tracy agrees on the condition that if the book flops,
she will take the kids and go live at her sister’s.
After that, Ellison goes to his home office to work. First, he collects many notes and
pictures and makes a mood board with all the clues and information. Then he takes a look
at a picture of the attic the police had taken after the incident. The box is missing from
the picture. He figures that after the investigation was over, someone had put the box there. Then
he sets up the reel and the projector and plays the video. The first reel is titled
‘Family Hanging Out 11’. It is of the Stevenson family having fun and playing in
the house’s backyard. All five of them look delighted, but the scene abruptly changes
to the four of them hanging from the tree.
Ellison is beyond surprised. The murderer had shot this video of them before killing
them. As expected, Stephanie is missing from the last clip. Ellison re-watches the footage
and notices that the person who filmed the video is never shown. He writes this on his
notepad.
Then he watches the reel named ‘BBQ 79’. In the footage is another family called the
Martinez family by a lake. They have a barbeque picnic. Then the scene abruptly changes to
nighttime. The family is tied and gagged inside a car and with cans of gasoline inside. A
symbol is painted on the hood of the car. Ellison watches in terror as someone lights
the car of fire with the whole family inside it.
When he puts on the next reel, he suddenly hears a noise coming from outside. He goes
out again, calling for Ashley to see if it’s her. But when he checks her room, she is sleeping
peacefully. Then, he hears the noise coming from inside a moving box. Suddenly, Trevor
emerges from the box shouting in fear. Ellison picks him up and takes him outside to calm
him down. They label it as one of Trevor’s night terrors.
The following morning is a happy one for the family. They eat breakfast together, after
which the kids and Tracy leave. Ellison gets back to his work. He continues playing the
reel he left last night. This one is named ‘Pool party 66’. In the film, a family
enjoys a lovely day at the pool while someone from a corner films them. The scene again
changes to show that it is now nighttime. The family is tied to pool benches and dragged
into the water. They are drowned and killed. But Ellison also notices a strange figure
inside the pool, watching the family die. He Zooms onto the person. It doesn’t look
like a human.
As he inspects the picture closely, the projector starts to burn. He quickly puts the fire out.
He goes to his computer and learns how to edit the film. Now he can watch the videos
even on his computer. Tracy and the kids are back home. Tracy is furious because Trevor
had drawn a picture of four people hanging from a tree on his classroom’s whiteboard.
Tracy blames Ellison for this, and they get into an argument. Later at night, Ellison
is in his office analyzing another one of the reels. In this one, an empty kitchen is
shown in the middle of the night. As the camera moves, the symbol from the earlier video is
shown. Then, in one of the rooms, a couple lies bound on a bed. Someone slits their throat
open and, in another room, does the same to a kid.
Ellison finds an address in the video and searches the murder on the internet. There
he finds out that, like the Stevenson family’s case, the youngest member of the family had
disappeared after the murder. As he researches the murder, the lights suddenly go off. He
then hears the floor creaking outside. He hears that the noise is coming from the attic,
so he climbs up there. With his phone’s flashlight, he looks around. Then he finds
a drawing of little kids that depicts the murders with the strange figure called "Mr.
Boogie" standing next to the victims. He moves around, and the attic’s floor beaks beneath
him, sending him down to the floor.
The paramedics and the police arrive. Ellison has injured his leg. He tells the deputy police
that he heard someone moving in the house and might be an intruder. They inspect the
attic and conclude that it might be some kind of animal-like squirrel. The deputy police
is a fan of Ellison’s book. He asks Ellison if he can help him write his next book in
any way. Taking the opportunity, Ellison asks him for the reports of the murders. The deputy
then leaves, and Ellison gets back to his work. He has taken pictures of the drawings
in the attic and is inspecting them on his computer. He watches the videos of the murders
on repeat and finds the same figure standing in the background of every video.
Later he gets a call from the deputy police, who gives him the name and address of one
of the families in the video. Ellison finds out that the murders take place at different
times and in different cities across the country. Then he finds that the Stevenson family lived
in the house where the Miller family were murdered before moving to Pennsylvania.
Just then, he finds a video of himself that was accidentally taken when he fell from the
attic. In the video, he sees several children’s hands pushing him down. Ellison is beyond
surprised. That night, a noise wakes Ellison up. He goes to his office and sees his laptop
display the picture of the Stevenson family hanging in their backyard. He turns it off
and goes to the window, where he sees the figure standing at the same place like in
the picture. He goes out to check and finds Trevor behind the bushes hiding because of
his night terror. He brings him inside and goes out again to get his flashlight. There,
he encounters a dog, and we see the lost kids of the murdered family behind him.
The following day, the deputy officer brings him the reports of the murders. He looks at
the symbol in Ellison’s mood board and suggests he call a professor named Jonas, who is an
expert in occult symbols. Ellison gets on a conference call with Jonas, who tells him
about the symbol. According to him, such symbols refer to an ancient deity named Bughuul, who
would kill entire families and take one of their children to consume their soul slowly.
Jonas suspects the murders are part of a cult. Hearing this, Ellison is distraught. He keeps
the projector and the reels inside the box and locks his office.
At night, he wakes up to his office door wide open and the reel playing inside. He stops
the reel and looks around the house for any intruder. As he moves, we see the spirits
of the children that had disappeared around the house. But Ellison doesn’t notice them.
One of the girl’s spirits sits in front of Ashely as she looks at her horrified. That
night, Ellison falls asleep on the couch. In the morning, Ashley draws a picture on
the wall and is scolded by her mother. Ellison is surprised to see that the picture she has
drawn is of Stephanie. That way, Tracy gets to know that a family had died in the house
she is living in. She is furious at Ellison for not telling her, and they get into a huge
fight. She wants all of them to leave the house immediately.
That night, Ellison wakes up to a loud noise coming from his office. But he goes to check
in; he finds nothing. Then he sees the attic’s ladder is down. So, he climbs up to see if
there is an intruder. However, when he is up, he is terrified to see the children’s
spirits watching a film of Bughuul on the projector. Ellison is stunned as the children
look at him. Just then, Bughuul appears in front of him. Startled, Ellison falls to the
ground. The box of reels and the projector fall in front of him.
Ellison has now made his decision to run away. He takes the reels, brings them out to the
backyard, and burns them. Tracy finally wakes up and inquires about what he is doing. Ellison
tells her that they should have never moved to this house. He makes everyone hurriedly
pack their essentials and drives away. The following morning, the family is in their
new house.
Ellison calls professor Jonas who informs him that the Bughuul possess pictures and
lives on earth through it. Ellison realizes that the film was probably possessed too.
After the call, Ellison deletes all the pictures and videos of the murders from his laptop.
The movers have brought their stuff in from the old house. Ellison goes to the house’s
attic and finds the box with the projector and reels on it. There he also finds an extra
envelope of reels that says ‘extended cut endings.’ He comes down to his office and
starts setting up the projector. Just then, the deputy officer calls him. He has found
crucial information about the murders.
Every family that had been murdered had lived in each other’s previous homes. Each new
murder occurred shortly after the family moved from the crime scene into a new residence.
So, because they moved from the last house to this one, Ellison and his family are basically
the next to be murdered. Stunned, Ellison cuts the phone call and plays the newfound
reels. He is horrified to find that the murderers behind the camera were actually the kids that
had disappeared. Stephanie hangs from her father’s dead body, and another child plays
with the knife he used to kill his family. By the end of the video, Ellison feels hazy.
He gets up and sees green stuff on the bottom of the cup he was drinking from. The same
green stuff can be seen on every video of the murders.
He notices a note from Ashley that says "Good night, Daddy" under the cup. Then, he falls
unconscious. When he wakes up, he, Tracy and Trevor are tied to the ground beside him.
Ashley stands in front of him with an ax and a video camera. She films him as she hits
him with the weapon. Cut to a few minutes later, Ashley shows us around the house. The
walls are covered with blood. Ashley has drawn several things on the wall. Later, she adds
her drawing to the other children’s. She draws Ellison, Tracy, and Trevor’s bodies
decapitated, suggesting that she has beheaded them with the ax. The move ends as Bughuul
picks up Ashley and takes her inside the reel.
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