Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jenn Wexler
Starring: Madison Baines, Georgia Acken, Mena Massoud, Olivia Scott Welch, Gus Kenworthy, Derek Johns, Laurent
Pitre, Chloë Levine
Director Jenn Wexler drew acclaim with her low-budget slasher
debut The Ranger and returns with some Christmas themed
bloodshed with her second film, The Sacrifice Game. At first glance it appears to sit alongside movies like the '90s
franchise entry Halloween: H20 and the 2014 Haley Bennett
vehicle Kristy, in which students left behind at their school are menaced by
murderous forces. It even shares the cult aspect of Kristy, but Wexler's film delivers a mid-movie twist that takes it into more
fantastical territory.
It's Christmas 1971 and the Blackvale school for girls is shutting down
for the holidays. Left behind are two young pupils – mousy Samantha (Madison Baines) and Clara (Georgia Acken), a proto-goth who keeps to herself
and is prone to cutting chunks out of her arm – and a kindly teacher,
Rose (Chloe Levine), and her handyman boyfriend Jimmy (Gus Kenworthy). Initially Samantha and Clara are frosty to Rose's attempts to lift
their spirits, but the three gradually bond over the course of Christmas
Eve. Their fun ends with the arrival of four sadistic cult members
planning to perform a sacrifice on the school grounds.
By this point we've already witnessed this quartet of killers in
action. Wexler nods to the sort of grisly thrillers that played on the
public's fear of cults in the early '70s in the wake of the Manson
murders with some unflinching violence. She opens her film with a
shocking scene in which the camera watches through the windows of a
suburban home as a husband and wife are butchered inside, and we later
see a priest and a cop fall foul of the gang's bloodlust. The mob in
question is comprised of extroverted Prince lookalike Jude (Mena Massoud), his girlfriend Maisie (Olivia Scott Welch), nervy Doug (Laurent Pitre) and Grant (Derek Johns), a quiet and hulking Vietnam vet.
They're just the sort of creeps you might find in something like
Last House on the Left or its many drive-in
imitators.
Given the horrors we've witnessed, the tension is immediate once the
cultists arrive at Blackvale. Things are made all the more unsettling by
having Samantha and Clara played by very young actresses rather than the
twentysomethings we usually find cast in these roles, especially when
Jude begins to talk about the need to shed the blood of an innocent as
part of their sacrifice.
We think we have this movie sussed, and we're on board with its
thrills. It's a gritty grindhouse thriller along the lines of the 1985
Oxploitation classic Fortress or 1975's
Trip with the Teacher, in which mild-mannered teachers are forced to defend their pupils
from murderous maniacs, right? Wrong. Halfway through, Wexler and
co-writer Sean Redlitz pull the rug out from under our
expectations. It's a twist that will likely prove divisive as it shunts
the film into a different genre.
I have to say it's something of a whiplash. Having been fully on board
with the simple but well-handled exploitation fare Wexler was serving
up, I struggled to follow the movie in its new direction, which takes it
into the realms of Young Adult fantasy. A major problem is that the
power dynamics are shifted, which means we're left with nobody to really
fear for, and it's difficult to empathise with the character now
positioned as the central figure, given how we know what they've been
responsible for.
The movie also suffers from an inconsistent tone. Much of the first
half is dark and brooding, but there's also some knowing
self-referential humour, like how a character comments on the cliché of
horror movie characters having an encounter with an animal on the road
as a "bad omen" (see
Get Out,
The Invitation
and
Talk to Me
to name just three recent examples of this trope). This dilutes the
established threat of the villains. In the movie's second half the
grindhouse setup has been traded for something closer to
The Witches of Eastwick. Some have praised this audacious about face but I found myself losing
interest the further the film strayed into the territory of the
fantastic and away from its more grounded roots.
The Sacrifice Game is on
Shudder from December 8th.
