Main cast: Mena Massoud (Jude), Olivia Scott Welch (Maisie Bannion), Gus Kenworthy (Jimmy), Madison Baines (Samantha), Derek Johns (Grant), Laurent Pitre (Doug), Chloë Levine (Rose), and Georgia Acken (Clara)
Director: Jenn Wexler
The Sacrifice Game takes place in 1971, about three days before Christmas. Students Clara and Samantha stay back at the all-girls boarding school Blackvale Academy along with their teacher Rose and Rose’s boyfriend Jimmy.
If the whole thing feels Black Christmas-y, well, you know how it is with this genre. Nothing good comes out of staying behind in boarding school during the holidays, as countless slasher flicks in the 1980s have demonstrated.
Indeed, the place is soon invaded by friendly neighborhood serial killers. Maisie and her buddies Jude, Grant, and Doug have committed a series of murders all this while as part of a demon summoning ritual, and on this very night, they intend to complete the ritual but are foiled by the police. They decide to seek shelter at Blackvale only to realize that they are not alone.
Oh dear, can the two students and the adults fend off these villainous murderers?
Okay, let me get straight to the point: this movie to get really good—which is to say, the fun bloodshed begins—at about the 80th-minute mark, and by that time, there are about 10 minutes or so of movie left.
Up to that point, it’s mostly Mena Massoud and Laurent Pitre chewing scenery while Olivia Scott Welch seems confused as to whether she’s head psycho or aspiring to be the final girl. While the scenery chewing is alright, the whole thing starts to feel repetitive and going nowhere after a while and I feel boredom setting in.
Also, Madison Baines is pretty dire here. She has one single expression throughout—befuddled Pomeranian—and her character acts in a way that suggests that Samantha may be tad… special in the head. Of course, special people need love too, but we are talking about special people that seem more than happy to set a demon free onto the world because someone is too kind not to chain this person up in the attic for life.
The movie also has some mild jabs at men being bastards in general, but I should point out that perhaps the message may be more effective if the message hadn’t been delivered by a psycho demon hell-bent on mayhem and evil. I’m just saying.
Anyway, this is one movie that seems confused about what it wants to do or be. Whatever it sets out to do, the results are the complete opposite.
The main characters are supposed to be underdogs, I guess, but they just come off as one faction of unsympathetic psychos, a bland and boring bunch indeed, pitted against a more colorful faction of psychos that are more easy to root for because they are not dullards.
The demon is supposed to be a threatening presence, but it is played by a young lady that seems to be stiffly reading her lines out loud from a teleprompter. You’d think the demon would relish being so close to freedom that it would display some glee, but no, the actor is channeled possessed Greta Thundberg realness instead.
The worst sin of this film is that it takes way too long to even start to simmer, and it reaches boiling point for about five minutes before deflating in a most unimpressive manner into a morass of unimaginative stabs and some of the worst acting I’ve seen in a while from the lead young ladies.
In the end, why would anyone want to watch this unfunny, boring thing when The Babysitter already exists?
