Kurt Loder Reviews Seven Psychopaths and Sinister

Seven Psychopaths is a movie so devilishly well-crafted that it's nearly consumed by its own brilliance, writes Kurt Loder. The writer-director, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, is a master of nasty laughs and bloody comic violence, and he keeps them coming…and coming. There's barely time to catch your breath. If movies could pick their own flaws, though, this would be the one to go for.

Sinister, on the other hand, is a genuinely creepy horror film, bless its scabby little head. It's a deft assemblage of genre readymades—haunted house, slasher, found-footage—bound together in an atmosphere of bleak portents that sometimes recalls The Shining, among other, admittedly better, films. What sets it apart from less-enterprising fright flicks is its disturbing imagery. The stuff in Sinister stays with you.