From Jeremy Kibler

A cult killing around Christmastime and invading a girls’ boarding school is the simple premise behind The Sacrifice Game. Writer-director Jenn Wexler and co-writer Sean Redlitz, however, slaughter expectations as their film moves along. Wexler’s 2018 feature debut The Ranger was a decently nasty slasher between obnoxious punk rockers and a crazed park ranger, but her follow-up film takes everything up a notch, aesthetically and narratively.

Over Christmas break in 1971 at the Blackvale School for Girls, not every student is getting picked up (this is very much a different film about holdovers than the one with Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Teacher Rose (Chloë Levine) and her boyfriend Jimmy (Gus Kenworthy), the school’s chef, are all set to look after Samantha (Madison Baines) and outcast Clara (Georgia Acken). Meanwhile, a cult is on the move, venturing out for blood to complete a ritual and summon a demon. As the school’s mantra goes, Blackvale girls have to stick together if they don’t become sacrifices.

The Sacrifice Game sheds blood in its vicious opening moments with a home invasion and double homicide happening right in front of the house windows. The one-take sequence has echoes of the Manson Family and lets us know that, even with the Christmas setting, this film isn’t going soft on anyone. Even from there, writer-director Wexler and co-writer Redlitz refuse to play it safe, efficiently developing characters we can root for and then doing anything they want with them. 

All of the performances are solid, but Georgia Acken ends up being a convincingly formidable presence beyond her years and size as Clara. The antagonists are a dangerous bunch but less invincible monsters than they are young people who have severely lost their way for a cause; they’re compromised of Maisie (Olivia Scott Welch), live-wire Doug (Laurent Pitre), Vietnam vet Grant (Derek Johns), and leader Jude (Mena Massoud). Each cult member feels like their own person, but Massoud (Aladdin himself from Guy Ritchie’s 2019 live-action Disney remake) has the most opportunities to be theatrical and charismatic. It’s a very over-the-top performance, and kind of one-note, but Jude is no less a merciless villain. 

The film may get a little silly in the end (a certain wardrobe change immediately gives Lydia Deetz cosplay vibes), but it stays on the right side of not diminishing the stakes. As far as holiday school-invasion thrillers go, The Sacrifice Game offers up some twisted surprises.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Sacrifice Game hits Shudder on December 8, 2023.

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