I was excited to see Ti West’s The
Sacrament show up on Netflix streaming a few weeks ago. His early Trigger Man (2007) was an efficient,
stripped down, effective film. I loved House
of the Devil and The Innkeepers. He’s
a good writer, has an excellent eye, and is known for slowly building tension
and then blowing it up with intense action late in the film. (The term “slow
burn” has been so often applied to his work that he’s apparently annoyed
with it; seriously, google it and his name and you’ll see). Ti West wrote and
directed The Sacrament, Amy Semeitz
and Joe Swanberg get top billing but AJ Bowen has at least as much screen time.
Semeitz and Swanberg are
two of the most prolific young filmmakers/actors in indie film and West is no
slouch either.
As excited as I was, I saved this film for October. And now
I’ve seen it and I am sadly underwhelmed. It follows a reporter, a cameraman,
and a photographer (all ostensibly from Vice magazine, in a weird media
synergy) who travel to a remote compound to check on, and maybe rescue, the
photographer’s sister (Seimetz) from a possible cult. The Sacrament looks good
and is competently constructed, building tension and dread (as we expect from
West). But the film ends up being far too conventional. Except for the presence
of the crew and some grisly shocks at the end, it might as well be a Jim Jones
docudrama. No twists, no surprises, nothing to make it stand out.
Very disappointing. So disappointing, in fact, that I stopped the credits and promptly played House ofthe Devil, which I hadn’t seen since it came out on video. It’s so indebted
to 80’s occult horror – music, hair, costumes, the grainy look of the film, the walkman dancing – that it
straddles the fence between homage and caricature. But it’s made with love and
gets every bit right. This one burns so slowly that it has its detractors, but
I find it kind of beautiful.
1980's Greta Gerwig
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