(MCT) — “Sinister” goes about as far as a horror movie can with just shocking images, a good cast and outstanding sound design. But this modestly creepy blend of “The Ring” and “The Shining” whiffs on a horror film fundamental: Nobody seems that scared.

What fear there is is faced by one person, and he’s very slow to get alarmed over the things that go bump in the night and the boogieman he thinks he catches a glimpse of, many times.

But Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke), a true-crime author in desperate need of a hit, doesn’t tell his wife and family that he’s moved them into a house that was the scene of a mass murder. He sees nothing weird in the fact that he finds old home movies of that murder (a whole family hanged) and many other murders, and the projector that will show them, all out in the open at what was a one-time crime scene.