The Sacrament

The Sacrament

Directed by: Ti West

Horror/Thriller, 95min

USA, 95 min.

Ti West. What a rollercoaster of a career he’s taken me on! The House of the Devil was amazing original and really promised something really great. Cabin Fever 2 : Spring Fever was kind of meh, but fun. The Innkeepers was fantastic and equally impressive as The House of the Devil had been. Second Honeymoon, his entry into anthology horror V/H/S was alright and had that classic West twist ending, and M is for Miscarriage, his part of The ABC’s of Death was just a lazy insult and really nowhere near the quality of story that one comes to expect from Ti West… so what was The Sacrament going to be like? Would it be a reclaim of the magic West certainly can deliver, or would it fall into the same disappointing pit that several others have? 

First off, The Sacrament has a great poster as you can see above, a great trailer as you can see below and all great premises that make fantastic movies. But West takes a risk with The Sacrament. Well really several risks, namely that his story has a familiar ring to it as movies like both René Cardona’s Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979), and Kevin Smith’s Red State (2011), and certainly the “swanky” on the edge documentary filmmakers of yesteryear, the infamous Alay Yates and his missing crew of Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust 1980.

 

The basic set up is this; Fashion photographer Patrick Carter’s [Kentucker Audley] former drug addicted sister Caroline [Amy Seimetz] went to live with a religious community at an undisclosed location. Vice correspondent Sam Turner [A.J. Bowen] decides tags along with cameraman Jake [Joe Swanberg] to document the community and the Carter family Reunion in hopes of a new rad story for VICE.

They pack up and take off to a cool very VICE like montage and music, taking us through the opening credits, which I’d possibly have left of and gone right into the story, just like VICE does if I was trying to mimic before setting them down in the unmentioned jungle area. Armed guards meet them at the makeshift helicopter-landing patch in the jungle area before they are shown on the back of a truck and taken towards the camp to meet up with Caroline. At Eden Parish they are met with more hostility. Forced to turn off their camera Sam starts to worry about this gig. When Patrick’s sister Caroline finally show up, she’s fill of, apologizes and explains that the Kalashnikovs are merely a precaution as both government and locals in the area are not to happy about their self-made community in the middle of nowhere.

Still uncertain if they will be granted an interview with either Caroline or the parish’s mystic leader figure Father [Gene Jones] the team get right to work and start interviewing people in the community who all praise the community whist Father delivers messages of peace and love over the P.A. system. Later that night Father  grants the documentary team a brief interview where he answers the investigatory questions in a defensive manner before politely calling the interview to an end and inviting the team to a celebration in honor of their visit. It’s during this late night festivity that Savannah [Talia Dobbins] ay young mute girl, approaches Sam and hands him a hand written not with the sentence “Please help us” written on it. The parish members engage in a creepy religious chanting. Worried for his whereabouts, Sam and Jake look for Patrick, but can’t find him. Tensions build, and it becomes apparent that Eden Parish holds secrets and dark sides that certainly are not commonly associated with Paradise!

Just in case you do not know anything about the movies I mentioned initially, I’ll stop there. I wouldn’t want you feeling that I spoiled anything for you. Instead I’ll get right into the pros and cons of this film a movie that certainly will find its audience, will be a great thrill for some, but at the same time is a movie that could, should and would have been so much better if only a few things had been taken into consideration. At least in my opinion.

Style wise West totally nails it. It is like watching a VICE documentary, and believe me I’ve seen almost all of them. The Sacrament boasts cool hipster vibe, and a cool soundtrack, addressing the viewers and has documentary hosts/journalists breaking the fourth wall whenever possible, dodgy cinematography, candid camera chats shot with extreme dutched angles – because its all ad hock documentary right! Even the font and explanatory texts that add narrative to the piece work just like VICE documentaries do.  The only real difference is that The Sacrament is trying to come off as if you are seeing the unedited footage.

This brings in a definitive Cannibal Holocaust/Blair Witch/Cloverfield tone to the footage, which is supposedly acting as candid material. It works, but being someone who has worked professionally with television for the last twenty years, the somewhat too good and well-edited “raw footage” often takes me out of the atmosphere West is after. This is also where I start to loose interest, because personally I find that the found footage/raw material gimmick is losing it’s shtick and in a movie not to unlike this one, I’ve seen it for real in stuff like Barbet Schroder’s magnificent General Idi Amin Dada (1974) and if you’ve seen enough Mondo movies you’ve seen the Jonestown documentary footage too.

What starts off so perfectly as an authentic VICE report simply fizzles into generic “keep the camera rolling” mode, despite candid from the heart confessions of what Sam and Jake are thinking and experiencing. I’m easily disappointed in movies that set off to be one thing, as in this case, a VICE documentary and then end up being edited found footage movies, where certain angles may have been shot at random by the second camera that they have, but that camera was left behind, and that’s a big continuity error – especially when you end your movie with a text claiming that this footage is the only first hand account of what took place at Eden Parish. I also don’t like the fact that it goes movie drama style when signaling that it wants to be VICE, and that’s also why I’d leave the actor and director credits off the start of the movie if this was my flick. Hell, I would have made it with unknowns, in three segments and put it out there as an authentic VICE documentary. Now THAT would have blown socks off an audience!

Most the cast are the backbone of the Mumblecore movement and there’s certainly nothing wrong with their performances, on the contrary, they are awesome and sell it perfectly. The main problem for me is that they never really manage to generate any real empathy, or concern. There’s so much more that could have been done with the characters. Sam could have been much more cynical, or given a more dimensional approach seen as he has a pregnant wife at home and on several occasions refers to them. There’s something of interest there a cynical TV producer out to exploit and mock something “sacred” whilst having his own strong values even closer to heart. Or why not have cameraman Jake be more push and risk taking? Then there’s Patrick, the swanky fashion photographer who more or less is the initiator of the journey is missing for a huge chunk of the film, why not use his character more, have him being a sleazebag taking photos in that risky borderline sexuality style that VICE photographers do?  There’s a lot more that had been possible with these characters. Caroline could have been used to shed more light into the inner circle and workings of the parish, the one to shed light on why it’s so fantastic there, and all those “dark sides” mentioned at times during the corse of the film. She could even have built the Father character to a bigger, mightier omnipresent, enigmatic or anything person. Instead this is somewhat done through supporting actors in sound bites and interview snippets explaining what and why Eden Parish is heaven on earth, but it doesn’t add anything to the mysticism of Father. He never really comes of as a great leader, despite sporting shades and khaki suit, but just another bloke with a bunch of followers looking to him for salvation. Neither do I sympathize, or gain any kind of emotional recognition with Father and his parish as there’s not really anything unique in there… to be honest, it could be called a re-boot of the afore mentioned René Cardona Jr. flick Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979), because it really doesn’t add anything.  (Just Google the 1978, December 4th  issue of Newsweek and you’ll see certain images that are almost identical to The Sacrament)

With that said, this is certainly precisely what West was after, to recreate a piece of history with contemporary imaging. There’s really no way that you can look at the Newsweek or news reports of that time and not react to the simple fact that they are despite being almost forty years old, still just as exploitative as some of the VICE reports. Perhaps it is all a commentary on how easily manipulated we human beings are in a world where nothing really holds any real value, the infortunes of people following false prophets are reported on every day. It could well be a reflection on the VICE generation where everything is met with a Meh and a witty tweet update. It could also be a comment on how easy we look at the value of others lives in our very busy and cynical world.

There is certainly something bitter in the after taste of The Sacrament, and at the end of the day, I have to say that it did capture my attention, it did draw me in and it did what it was supposed to do, i.e. entertain me, although the final act was a rather big letdown. I was expecting something else, not a low key, simple observing, almost accidentally “caught up in the events” story. Ti West can do better that this, and despite using his familiar tricks of an ordinary world, low key eeriness, and building a magnificent tension within the space of it’ universe, the air seeps out towards the end. The Sacrament is a damned fine piece of craftsmanship and a really anxious movie as it slowly builds, leaving that West trait of creeping unease seep in as it moves towards its climax. Within the Ti West universe, it’s a decent piece that will sit well just below the notches that The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers carved in genre cinema.

This is a movie that has me polarized, there's some really great things going on here, but at the same time, there's several things that bug me. The real down side of The Sacrament is that it doesn’t really explore or bring anything new to the table, at least not for someone who has been around the block a few times and seen a reasonable amount of exploitation fare. The story is overtly parallel with the Jonestown Massacre. The status quo is reinstated, and the down beat, mind fuck ending that comes with great Ti West films is lacking, despite the film presenting a bleak finale. Oh, and there’s one scene that is so fucking stupid that it totally wrecks one of the arcs West has preciously built to that point, and a moment that is totally illogical in the shadow of the events that have taken place. Perhaps it’s my knowledge of the stories and movies that without a doubt inspired The Sacrament that ruin my experience, and that constant desire for West to get back to the magnificence of The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers.

You're Next

You’re Next

Directed by: Adam Wingard

USA, 2010

Horror, 94min

Distributed by: Scandbox         

Home invasion films are a sub niche that has grown strong and powerful these last couple of years! Personally it’s among my favorite as I once was a victim of home invasion. A woman I’d never met before was in my apartment in the middle of the night and even though I managed to get her out, call the cops and change all the locks to my doors, the scars left where deep, hence this being the genre that creeps me out the most, which in my book, makes You're Next one of the most tantalizing creep-flicks this year!

A family gathers in a remote house to celebrate the 35-year anniversary of their parents. Outside a band of homicidal predators put the house under siege and start to minimize the number of family members one by one.  What they don’t know is that one person on the inside knows more about survival than they had reckoned on.

It’s clear that Adam Wingard knows how to get an audience to invest in his characters and story, and he does it almost by the book. This is a good thing and a trait that serves Wingard well. It’s definitely one of the reasons this mumble core - horror filmmaker is considered part of the horror genres future. Well, OK, Wingard is a fucking great director, but kudos needs to be given to Simon Barret too, because Barret is a pretty important part of the Wingard success, as Barret writes the scripts to Wingard’s movies. A Horrible Way to Die, Autoerotic, You’re Next, V/H/S, V/H/S/2, all Barret.

You’re Next starts up with a raw initial attack to set the tone; a couple in their post coital state of sweatiness become victims of an off-screen assailant. When we finally get to see the killers, they hide their faces behind childish animal masks. This presents the threat in the outside world, a threat in the dangerous place outside the safety of indoors. The masks make the threat more inhuman, and it also plays on genre convention – , the masked monster, the confusion of an unidentifiable assailant, the defaced killer who we are supposed to guess the identity of. Most likely the use of animal faces made for children is a way to take a harmless object and fill it with danger, doom and death is an ironic decision. Something cute becomes an object of terror.

The title of the film is presented in an Apocalypse Now kind of fashion – scrawled across an object instead of classic graphic vignette, although this time it’s blood on a window. It all adds to building the threat and allows perfect polarization against  the presentation of our lead characters Crispian  [AJ Bowen] and Erin [Sharni Vinson]. Crispian and Erin are on their way to Crispian’s parents, and we quickly understand that this is the first time Erin is to meet them. We also learn that Crispians parents are filthy rich, that family gatherings are few and that there are “certain issues” within the family. Erin is secretive about her background, which will be put into focus later on in the narrative. Cut to mother and father who enter their new home, the same home where the family gathering is to take place at. Paul [Rob Moran] and wife Aubrey [Barbara Compton] step up to the front door of the house only to find the door unlocked! In the following ten minutes the house becomes something of a McGuffin as it groans and creeks, suggestive camera angles show POV shots out of door openings, and windows. The tension builds, eventually sending Aubrey screaming out the front door convinced that there’s someone in the house… Paul does an obligatory and half-hearted check of the house whilst Aubrey cowers outside, giving Wingard a perfect moment to build anticipation and toss the real first jump-scare at us. It’s an effective one and it’s needed as the next couple of minutes are going to be spent branching out the family and cast.

This is time spent building up the hierarchy and dynamics of the family unit consisting of elder brother Drake [Joe Swanberg], complete with bully mannerisms and narcissist wife Kelly [Sarah Myers], hipster chic little sister Aimee [Amy Seimetz], her boyfriend Tariq [Ti West – yes, director of The Innkeepers and The House of the Devil] and baby brother Felix [Nicholas Tucci] and his girlfriend Zee [Wendy Glenn]. Character traits are rapidly exposed and in a way this is almost similar to the obligatory archetype presentations found in generic slasher - and college films, we understand the dynamics and how Drake bullies and manipulates them all, holding an reign of terror upon his siblings, all with the support of mom and dad, who are smugly pleased and teary eyed over the fact the they finally managed to get their children all together – despite all their internal issues and conflicts.  

In all honesty, the family are perhaps not characters that get any sympathies from the audience – after all this is a horror shocker and we just want the carnage to start - but there’s some form of emotional recognition with Crispian and his constant underdog positioning.  We are also pushed towards feeling for Erin, who in contrast to all the others offers to help out I the kitchen and is the one to take command when the terror starts to intrude the privacy of their safe world. So with the basic structure, let us call it “The Ordinary World” established the tableau is set and it’s time to bring on the horror. 

After a bout of “brotherly love” and “guilt tripping” (all great devices to use in horror) the ordinary world is shattered as the chaotic dinner party turns to violent massacre when crossbow arrows start being shot through the windows at the family, who now are reduced to a bunch of sitting ducks. There’s a shot of an arrow smashing into the framed photograph of the family sending shards of glass allover the place, a great metaphor for the destruction of the family unit, which this film is a representation of in more than one way. The realization that there’s an antagonist on the outside of the house sees the inhabitants start their fight for survival, and this could have been good enough to get the game underway, and wind tension up. But we know that there’s someone inside the house too, which increases the threat and makes the narrative even more suspenseful… when will they pounce and how hard will they hit!? 

Oh, if they’d only listened to mother!   

The masked assailants hit hard and ferocious and at times the violence is really sadistic and grim. At the same time there's a dark comedic undertone that flows through the film, something that one could consider a trait of Wingard and the mumblecore horror scene. Not slapstick or schtick, but more small things in life that are funny in their everyday way... or absurdity such as a blender to the brain!

After the dining room attack the movie really shifts gears and goes “all in” on the Survival Horror themes. Classic protagonist vs. antagonist traits presenting characters to root for and others to question, and manipulating the audience into each now shock/gore/death scene. Our voyeuristic sadism gets what it’s craving and at the same time we find a strong protagonist in one of the characters. Perhaps it’s not all that original, considering the conventional genre roles in horror, although this one has a logic and backstory to it that I found satisfying. Nobody becomes a superhero in the flash of an eye, it’s all planted along the narrative, as is reveals of what really is happening to the family. Tidbits of dialogue dropped along the way and seemingly unimportant acts all tie into the movie further down the road, and this is where I find the skill of the Barret/Wingard cooperation as details all come together as rushes of insight hit the audience.

An interesting scene is found somewhere in the second half, where a specifically violent and sadistic axe to the head beating, sees the masked killer almost being nauseated by his own acts. He gags, grunts and has to sit down on the sofa after the deed. This was fascinating, as I never earlier have seen a scene of violence where the dark hearted antagonist almost instantly is quenched by his/her own guilt. That’s what I kind of liked with the way the movie climaxes to as it forces characters to question their morale and judgment, just as it makes the audience ask the same questions. How far can you go in doing wrong for a good cause?

You’re Next is a spectacular example of contemporary horror. It takes the familiarity of the home invasion sub genre and brings a number of interesting new ingredients to it, and for once I’m actually glad to knowing what drives the killers, why this is happening, and watch a movie that does deliver some kind of closure at the end. All truths are revealed, and the truth hurts! With that said, You’re Next is in no way a movie that holds back on the nihilism, rather the opposite, it is dark, unpredictable, ominous and will make you think twice about attending family reunions for the rest of your life!

A slice of horror cinema served up in the best possible way, You’re Next hits Swedish cinemas 15th of November! Go see it, because we don't really get this kind of genre fare on screens here all that often!

And Soon the Darkness

And Soon the Darkness

Directed by: Robert Fuest

UK, 1970

Horror, 99min

How many “Lost gems” are there really out there? I find that every now and again, say every six months, a movie is released of which there’s little or less know, and after watching it I find myself with the same damned question! How the heck did this film slip off the radar, and why don’t more of us know about it?

And Soon the Darkness shouldn’t have been able to slip through our fingers as it’s more or less the lovechild of several predominate personas in horror and science fiction drama back in the sixties. Director Robert Fuest is certainly no stranger to low budget, low key thriller/horror fare with titles such as The Abominable Dr Phibes 1971, Dr. Phibes Rises Again 1972 and delightful occult “Lost masterpiece” The Devil’s Rain 1975 – which seems to be having a great revival right now. Fuest was also involved with UK Sixties pop culture secret agent sensation The Avengers and it’s follow-up series during the seventies. A quick glance at the screenwriters and you find Brian Clemens, also connected to The Avengers, The Persuaders, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad 1973 and even directed the Hammer outing Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter 1974. Finally, but certainly not least, Terry Nation, again connected to the previous two, through The Avengers, The Persuaders and also The Saint, but most importantly being the simple fact that HE IS the man responsible for Doctor Who’s all time archenemy, The Daleks.

So how come this movie slipped us by? Well in some ways it “rediscovered” in 2010 when Marcos Efron directed a US remake, adaptation featuring American lasses set in Argentina. Yeah, that one went completely past us without an imprint too… More the reason to dig out the original and 1970 Robert Fuest film based on screenplay by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation to see what this “Lost gem" has to offer up, and why.

A three-sentence quick fix is all you need to enjoy this little gem, and here it is: Two young women Jane [Pamela Francis, who also starred in John Hough’s seminal work The Legend of Hell House 1973] and Cathy [Michele Dotrice] are on a bike trip through France. After Cathy flirts with a man, Paul, [Sandor Elès] that they meet at a roadside café, an argument makes the women fall out with each other and go separate ways… But when Jane returns, Cathy is nowhere to be found.

The stranger in a strange land plot is a great one. Take people from one country, stick them in another where the hardly manage the lingo – even if its only French – and hey presto they are alienated and find themselves having severe difficulty communicating with their antagonists.  This device is used frequently in And soon the darkness, and in such a way that the lead character certainly feel the threat of the situations and not the actual meaning of what’s being said.

Quite often stupid reasons separate protagonists from each other, you know, the classic Oh I’ll pop over here whilst you go that way and look for that strange man… thankfully And Soon the Darkness separates Jane and Cathy in a logic way. A classic argument over who has the right to decide what their joint holiday is all about. After bickering Jane takes off leaving Cathy to lap up the sun and listen to pop music in a little secluded woodlands area just off the road. Way down the road Jane starts to see the error of her arrogance and stops at a rural roadside café as she awaits Cathy… but the wait will be long, as we already know something’s happened to Cathy.

This is where guilt comes into play. After her arrogant reasoning blows over, Jane starts to feel guilt. Cathy has gone missing and it’s her fault. Well not necessarily her fault, but she feels guilty for acting like a child and leaving her in the grassy nook of the roadside woods. This guilt is what drives Jane throughout the movie, taking her to places, into situations and talking to characters that she should perhaps have been more careful about. Guilt can drive characters to do completely irrational things if it’s in the goal of satisfying their conscience.

In a series of neat moves, that predates slasher traits a decade later, there’s a warning omen when an old woman [Hana Maria Pravda] warns Jane she’s travelling on “bad road!” a “Helper character” who delivers exposition and a seemingly crazy old mute  [Jean Carmet] who lives in a bust up shack just off the road. With this said, the disappearance of Cathy becomes even more menacing as there’s an apparent threat posed – she may be dead, and Jane might be next! The threat is enhanced as we learn of a previous murder of a young female tourist years earlier, and characters become even stranger in their behaviour. Made today, this would have been survival horror and we’d definitely had seen some torture porn along the way. But being a movie with forty-two years on it’s neck, And soon the darkness, is a classic old school mystery thriller with some rather tense and unsettling moments. The mind wanders easily towards Hitchcock and the great moods he created, as the questions keep being posed and are never answered until the very last moment. Slowly building up to that last minute shocking reveal, and an ending that I’m surprised didn’t earn this movie a wider reputation than what it has!

A lot of the tension comes through the matter of trust. Who is lurking in the woods, are the roadside innkeepers to rely on, can she really believe the story the English ex-pat [Clare Kelly] tells her, is Paul and his suspicious crime preventing theories trustworthy, and should she really put her faith in the help of the Gendarmerie [John Nettleton]. Who is friend, who is foe, your guess could be the last one you make.  The movie presents a gallery of shoddy characters as the plot thickens, and just when you start to decide where you have them, Fuest shakes things up and takes a swift turn in a new direction, quite often due to the paranoia that Jane is starting to experience.

Definitely a movie I’d recommend, and a delightful little thriller that really works. And Soon the Darkness needs to be brought back out into the daylight and re-discovered by fans of UK horror, and old school genre cinema.