A Sacrifice Review
A Sacrifice (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Jordan Scott, written by Jordan Scott, and starring Eric Bana, Sadie Sink, Sylvia Hoeks, Jonas Dassler, Sophie Rois, Stephan Kampwirth, Justine del Corte, and Joone Dankou.
It’s 2024, and cults are in. Well, I should say on a societal inquisitory level they are, and for good reason. They’re fascinating. Much has been written and documented about the old school titans of the 20th century, like Jim Jones and the Manson family, but recently there has been a new wave of media that has analyzed the cults of the modern era. Documentaries like The Vow that explored the NXIVM group in upstate New York who branded women and forced them into sexual slavery, or the 2019 horror smash hit, Midsommar, that explored a ritualistic death cult in Sweden. Technology has shaped everything in the modern world, including the ways that cult leaders find and recruit vulnerable and unsuspecting victims.
Jordan Scott’s feature-length debut, A Sacrifice, based on the novel Tokyo Nobody, wades into the white-clothed waters and dead-eyed stares of cult media but doesn’t add much to the conversation.
We begin in Germany with our lead, Ben Monroe (Eric Bana, who more or less sleepwalks through the material), working on his new book. You know this type of guy; he hit it big with a bestseller, and now he’s trying to rekindle that creative spark. He’s in Germany, studying a mysterious death cult for which his book is based (it’s actually based on some other psychological topic about the power of groupthink, but it doesn’t matter). The cult is obviously the draw.
Things get tricky when his estranged daughter Mazzy (Sadie Sink) arrives for a semester abroad, and on her travels to her father’s, she meets a young man, Martin (Jonas Dassler), who begins feeding her cryptic messages. Mazzy, being an angsty teen with divorced parents, is a perfect mark for Jonas, and he recruits her into the very cult her father is studying. The film isn’t bad as much as it is highly forgettable. Colors are muted, and the camera work felt dull, but there are some notable performances. The enigmatic cult leader, Hilma, is sharply played by Sophie Rois. The cadence in her voice and seamless switching from English to German dialogue had me thinking about joining up. Although their motive was a little too 21st century. Something about killing ourselves to save the planet? Does it matter?
Ben Monroe felt more like the villain in the movie, and I enjoy Eric Bana. His recent turn in Dirty John was fun, and he’s got plenty of solid films under his belt, but this isn’t one of them. He just kind of meanders around the frame with the same sullied look on his face. I bet the book he’s working on isn’t even good!
I think it’s worth noting that Jordan Scott is the daughter of one of the most important filmmakers ever to touch celluloid, Ridley Scott. There’s no need to delve into the nepo-baby argument; I’m sure there’s an article in the Guardian that uses lots of big words that can tell you everything you need to know. And as I said earlier, the film is passable. But it doesn’t dig deeper than the surface-level cult stuff. It’s not easy to do in 90 minutes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
The complexity of cult psychology is endlessly fascinating. How people give themselves over to an idea so much so that they’re willing to give everything away, including their own lives and the lives of others, but if you are searching for a deeper meaning to these questions, A Sacrifice is not a film where you will explore the answers.
Rating: 4/10
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