THE SACRAMENT

The Sacrament Movie Review

Patrick (Kentucker Audley) is joined by two guys from an alternate news company called VICE as he searches for his sister Caroline (Amy Seimetz, Pet Sematary) at a place called Eden Parish. What is Eden Parish? It's a commune. This is a horror movie. We, as horror fans, know that when you see a commune in a horror film, there's going to be some weird going on, but maybe not necessarily evil or bad. We then meet the leader, Father (Gene Jones), and find out he speaks words from The Bible. Now that we have a Christian in a horror movie, we are SURE evil is happening, and the religious dude is the villain.

There's also a creepy girl, just because

We can tell already this movie has a ton of elements we are used to, but the third act reveals something even more familiar--this is when our "Jim Jones" vibe is brought to life completely, as most of the rest of the story plays out as a reenactment of the very real Jonestown Massacre of 1978. With all that said, naturally a lot of what happens is fairly predictable, but don't dismiss this movie quite yet. Surprisingly, the acting is rather good here--more surprisingly, it's a halfway decent found footage film that bypasses the standard of the characters dropping F bombs to express fear, choosing to take a much smarter route. The film also does a nice job building tension--the music helps this tremendously, as it adds to a general uneasy feeling. There's not a lot of blood and guts in this movie, but there is a scene or two that will grab your attention in this category. If you see Eli Roth's name above the title, don't be fooled--his contribution is strictly as a producer, as the movie was written and directed by Ti West. The ending is, sadly, predictable and uninteresting, but even with this, The Sacrament turned out to be better than I expected it to be, and it stands head and shoulders above most found footage films of the past ten years...not that this is a great compliment. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 6

The Sacrament Movie Trailer