Austin scriptwriter C. Robert Cargill and his filmmaking partner, Scott Derrickson, famously convinced Ethan Hawke to make his horror debut with their merciless riff on moral consequences, Sinister. They built so much trust in the horror-averse Hawke that he then signed on to play his first-ever fully-fledged villain as the Grabber, the embodiment of all childhood fears. In a career of great performances, this child murderer stands as one of Hawke’s most excellent and unexpected, his face hidden, his voice reduced to a wheezy sing-song whisper, his body transformed into a bulldozer. Watch it and shudder. – Richard Whittaker
