The first half of ‘A Sacrifice‘ is remarkably dull considering that it starts off showing viewers nothing new. It is not even non-captivating, rather it is significantly forgettable the type of film whose title escapes you at any point of the viewing. To make things worse, the final act escalates to a whole new level of aggravation. It then shifts from utterly painfully slow to full-fledged madness. The disordered plot developments in the first two-thirds is more infuriating for someone who has attempted to have an investment in the narrative. I expect that there will be hardly any viewers by the time it starts derailing.
Ben Monroe (Eric Bana) is a social psychologist who is trying to get over a bad divorce he has moved to Berlin with the hopes that it will be easier for him to write his new novel on the social phenomenon of Groupthink. He gets a chance to witness a strange case of group suicide that he believes might have connections to a cult, which he plans to use for his book, only this time he’d have to do some serious diving into German culture. While there, he meets Nina (Sylvia Hoeks), the police officer assigned to the case. His 16-year-old daughter Mazzy (Sadie Sink) also arrives in Berlin hoping to bond with her father, but it only complicates his life further when he begins to date Nina.
Upon reaching his new destination, Mazzy encounters a seemingly innocent young man named Martin, who helps her figure out the trains and prepares to meet her again. He claims he works for an environmental NGO and brings her to one of his group’s meetings where their impressive leader, Hilda, is present. Even if Mazzy considers Martin along with the group as a warm welcoming change from her problematic relationship with her dad, it turns out she has gotten mixed up with the same cult that her father has been after. More remarkably, the cult has issued increasingly apocalyptic pronouncements regarding the breakdown of civilization and claiming that particular ‘sacrifices’ need to be made to right things.
Over the years there have been quite a few fascinating movies made about cults and how they psychologically prey on easily manipulatable individuals. (“Ticket to Heaven” (1981), “Split Image” (1982), and “Faults” (2014) come to mind.) Those films took the subject seriously without reducing it to a plot device. “A Sacrifice” by comparison, never displays any interest in what really motivates this kind of thinking. In her feature film debut, writer-director Jordan Scott is completely unsentimental about the materials, which are based on the 2015 novel Tokyo by Nicholas Hogg, and the performances of the stellar cast, devoid of any creativity, are likewise uninspiring.
It is followed by the finale, where everything gets out of control, and I mean everything. The fact that plot threads about Ben‘s investigation and Mazzy’s fling with Martin and his buddies come together in the end will probably shock too many people, I suppose. But, I wager few will fully gauge the extent of the absurdity and compromises that went into making that happen. The screenplay intentionally disregards any serious points it could have saved itself with a, ahem, risqué plot and, yes, it does revert to a ‘race against the clock’ and ‘serve the silly plot’ motif, especially at the end when the climax is approaching. Not having perused Scott’s novel, I cannot tell if Scott’s adaptation does justice to Hogg or not, whether his work has inspired a new path away from his book. But if that is the case, he can at least rest easy on the fact that the title change ensures that very few of the people who continue to view this show connect it with his book.
Watching “A Sacrifice” feels like watching an extended version of an unimpressive procedural serial that is several seasons past its peak. Both viewers and creators appear barely invested in the materials and that leads to extremely low levels of interest on the viewer’s side as well. It doesn’t get any more fascinating even when the movie tries to take more extreme turns towards the end. If there was ever a film that targets a repeat audience in the background while people do laundry or chores, this would have to be it.
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