The Facts:
Synopsis: The Blackvale School for Girls, 1971. It’s bad enough that students Samantha and Clara can’t go home for the holidays, but things take a deadly turn when a gang of cult killers arrives at their doorstep—just in time for Christmas.
Stars: Mena Massoud, Olivia Scott Welch, Gus Kenworthy, Madison Baines, Derek Johns, Laurent Pitre, Chloë Levine, Georgia Acken
Director: Jenn Wexler
Rated: NR
Running Length: 90 minutes
TMMM Score: (5/10)
Review: It’s around mid-summer when you start to see the cheapo imitators of high-profile blockbusters pop up on streaming services and on-demand rentals. Any time a new Jurassic Park or King Kong movie arrives, you can bet you’ll find a Prehistoric Ape flick at Redbox. Any disaster film that made a killing at the box office will get its low-budget rip-off in the form of a more over-the-top (but easier to add lousy effects to) eco-horror movie starring a B-level has-been. What you rarely get are polar opposite films that overlap in theme but not genre. These are the interesting ones that catch my attention.
Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers has been a hit with audiences and critics since making the festival rounds in early September. Looking likely to score several Oscar nominations (and probably a win for Best Supporting Actress), it follows the events on a sleepy campus over Thanksgiving weekend and the random souls who didn’t go home for the holiday. While that film is enjoying its lead-up to awards season and netting some recognition, a smaller film has debuted on Shudder, covering some of the same ground but with its own spooky twist.
In Jenn Wexler’s The Sacrifice Game, a Christmas holiday turns deadly when two students and a teacher staying behind at a secluded boarding school are terrorized by a quartet of Satanists who believe the institute holds the key to fulfilling a ritual their cross-country crime spree has been leading to. With only a page of an ancient manuscript to guide their grisly sacrament, the gang has chosen the wrong girls to corner because they aren’t as meek as they appear and could be holding a larger secret. Turning the tables on the unsuspecting crew may take some work, but the gory game stretches back further than any of them could have imagined…well, most of them.
Wexler uses the film’s ultra-low budget to give The Sacrifice Game a pleasing grindhouse aura, which creates the desired effect of retro drive-in entertainment most of the time. Scenes following the cult as they terrorize a couple in the opening scene and later as they move through the darkened school look expectedly creepy. Alexandre Bussière’s camerawork is menacing enough to keep the viewer engaged even when the script fails to connect to its horror origins. Where the cinematography doesn’t work are scenes when the threat needs to be pulled back, and light needs to creep through the gloom. These are when the meager funds show, and the period-set film (1971) looks like a bunch of modern actors wearing clothes from a costume shop.
Performances are a bit of a mixed bag, with Aladdin star Mena Massoud delivering a most committed take on a crazed cult killer. Massoud seems to have gotten the message that the scenery is chewy and decides to make it a meal because he gnaws through every inch of it. That can often overwhelm his fellow actors, though partner in crime Olivia Scott Welch (Fear Street: Part One – 1994) nicely holds her own. Speaking of Welch, credit must be given for surviving an extended sequence where her hair changes lengths with almost every cut. Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy (80 for Brady) has a small part as the teacher’s boyfriend (Chloë Levine), but I hope he’s kept his ski boots on hand; the acting isn’t working for him.
Where The Sacrifice Game works the most consistently and can start to become frustrating is the relationship between the two girls played by Madison Baines and Georgia Acken. Baines is nice girl Samantha, abandoned by her family, who befriends outcast Clara (Acken) so they can first make it through a shared Christmas and later survive their vicious attack. When Clara proves to be more equipped to deal with the killers than Samantha imagined, they work together to divide and conquer. Both actresses have decisive moments but can’t quite grasp the authority of their roles, leaving more than a few fiery scenes merely half-charred.
Wexler’s script, written with Sean Redlitz, throws in a few nice twists (none shocking) that lead to a satisfying conclusion. Still, I wondered how much The Sacrifice Game might have been elevated with a bigger budget and a few stronger actors in leading roles. It is a nice alternative horror to add to a growing list of Christmas-themed scare flicks; I wouldn’t rank this high on your checklist if it means sacrificing another viewing of Scrooged or Christmas Vacation to do it, though.