Sinister

Scott Derrickson's Sinister was scientifically measured as the scariest movie ever made in a 2020 study that tracked heart rates of viewers — and anyone who has watched the Super 8 footage sequences understands why. Ethan Hawke plays a true-crime writer who moves his family into a murder house and discovers a box of home movies in the attic. Each film reel depicts a different family being murdered in increasingly ritualistic fashion, and the lo-fi, degraded quality of the footage creates a feeling of watching something genuinely forbidden. The demon Bughuul — who lives in images and corrupts children — is one of the most effectively unsettling horror villains of the decade. Christopher Young's score, combined with experimental music by Boards of Canada and Sunn O))), creates a soundscape that feels physically oppressive.