In short: The Sacrifice Game (2023)

Christmas 1971. A quartet of serial killers – psychopathic Jude (Mena Massoud), quiet muscle Grant (Derek Johns), semi-professional follower Doug (Laurent Pitre) and secret mastermind Maisie (Olivia Scott Welch) have literally cut a path through quite a few religious weirdos, cutting away parts of their skins carrying very curious looking birthmarks for what they call a “flesh puzzle”.

On Christmas Eve, they end up in a boarding school for girls, where one teacher (Chloë Levine), and two girls – Samantha (Madison Baines and Clara (Georgia Acken) have been left behind over the holidays. Maisie was once at the school herself and was thrown out when she dabbled in the occult, as so often happens at boarding schools. Not without taking a page of a magic book from the cellar library with her that contains the ritual she and her gentlemen friends are attempting to follow; a ritual that is supposed to summon a demon. Now, only the blood of innocents drawn at the school is left, and the ritual should be finished.

Obviously, things don’t go as smoothly as these four nincompoops expect. Turns out, Maisie has only ripped a part of the ritual from the book before she had to leave school, and has thusly misunderstood the nature of what she’s trying to achieve rather badly.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter Jenn Wexler’s The Sacrifice Game certainly isn’t. Subtlety, depth and complexity aren’t this film’s game (sorry). Instead, this is all about the fun of seeing various trope-heavy characters and ideas collide and enjoying the sparks that fly.

Thankfully, Wexler’s direction is focussed and stylish – with a particularly fine sense for the use of Christmas colours and those connected to 70s cinema - and the script by her and Sean Redlitz fast-paced and fun, with a couple of scenes – particularly early on in the film – that demonstrate admirable control over the language of suspense and thriller material. The film does get a little less impressive during its final act, as usually happens once a movie like this comes to the phase where contemporary screenwriting rules demand explanations and “twists”, something that’s by now so expected, I always find myself yawning a bit at the structurally not at all surprising “surprises”. Detailed explanations the film at hand would have worked without, as well, but this is, alas, how the sausage is made right now.

This shouldn’t overshadow how fun a little Christmas-set horror movie this is otherwise. I’m just an old man yelling at clouds tonight.