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The Sacrament
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Second Sight Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th August 2024). |
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The Film
 Fashion photographer Patrick (V/H/S's Kentucker Audley) receives a letter from his sister Caroline (Upstream Color's Amy Seimetz) who disappeared after getting out of rehab for the umpteenth time, it explains that she has been "working hard to build a community where we can finally live free as God intended" and inviting him to visit with a phone number to call; whereupon, he learns that this community is in a remote part of the world and that to visit her he must travel without knowing where he is going. Current affairs multimedia channel VICE reporter Sam (The Signal's AJ Bowen) thinks it would make a good story and has Patrick obtain permission for himself and cameraman Jake (You're Next's Joe Swanberg) to accompany him to the "reunion." Landing in a jungle, the trio are unnerved when they are greeted by armed guards, but Caroline insists that it is a precautionary measure. She introduces them to a community of like-minded people seeking "a distance from imperialism, violence, poverty, racism and all other unacceptable attacks on basic human rights," when they met a preacher they all refer to as "Father" who gave them hope. While Patrick seems just relieved that his sister seems to be doing well, Sam and Jake are naturally skeptical and a bit cynical especially upon learning that the members have sold off everything they own to contribute but also a bit concerned about the naivete of this movement despite assurances from nurse Wendy (Hidden Figures' Donna Biscoe) that they are prepared for all contingencies medical or otherwise. Caroline arranges an interview for Jake with Father (The Hateful Eight's Gene Jones) which he insists be conducted in the presence of the entire congregation before the night's festivities. Although Patrick is prepared with hard-hitting questions, he is disarmed by Father's charisma and even prepared to accept everything as it appears; that is, until later that night when a congregant delivers a letter that reads simply: "Help us!" The sixth feature of filmmaker Ti West whose had been toiling in low budget shorts and features for almost a decade before vaulting to popularity with his third feature the slavish "eighties" throwback House of the Devil as he has once again emerged from the background with the Mia Goth trilogy starting with X which must have seemed deep and meaningful during a slump in the genre dominated by disappointing franchise reboots followed by what must have seemed like a career-advancing opportunity helming the awful Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever for LionsGate and then the more lowkey and refined The Innkeepers, The Sacrament found West trying something new with familiar elements with largely pointless results. A combination of found footage and video photo journalism exploring a Jim Jones-like cult setup, the film is initially intriguing and unsettling up to the point when the viewer realizes that there is not going to be any way out there twist, supernatural or otherwise as we got the same year with V/H/S/2's "Safe Haven" segment of Gareth Evans (The Raid) and Timo Tjahjanto (Headshot) and that the film is indeed just the Jim Jones story compressed and updated to the modern day for the express purpose of more immediate video documentation. The events simply unfold with no suspense whatsoever apart from whether the protagonists will survive or not, offering no true insight into the cult mentality or Father's charisma apart from him simply appearing to be a smooth-talker with all the answers who can play to a crowd (yeah, we know, but this is 2013). Even within the framing context of the video documentation, West does not interrogate journalistic representation. Although set up as the cynical asshole who might press issues for content, Bowen's Jake softballs the interview and has to tell the camera he was caught off-guard because it does not really come across dramatically he even tells the camera and Sam that he has changed his opinion about things just before he gets the note and it ultimately seems as though things might have unfolded as they did without their involvement or with just about any other visitor with or without a camera; and things do indeed unfold as they did in real life approximately. Father alludes that certain government agencies have been watching them but this glossing over feels as lazy as West's decision not to ratchet up the tension by having Jake and Sam decide to get some sleep rather than going out at night and spying on the efforts of the "cleanup crew" and wake up to chaos. Father accuses them of coming and destroying everything he and his congregation worked for in a day, and he seems ready to burn it all down due to three people who have arrived without telling anyone where they were going (one even wonders if the "certain government agencies" comment is a delusion or a tool of manipulation). Jones (Gene, that is) does what he can with not enough to work while the ambiguity of Seimetz's character early on and her later fervency at least can be explained by her need to contribute without realizing her own ruthlessness, while the rest of the cast just seems slotted in by West from the mumblecore movement as a shortcut for naturalism, although Swanberg is more effective than Bowen at communicating his skepticism and cynicism non-verbally, which seems an odder addition than the "executive producer" credit for Eli Roth (Hostel). Audley would also appear in Seimetz's directorial debut She Dies Tomorrow. The mass suicide is only disturbing in so far as being based on reality but viscerally is no more effective than the gooey, mass-casualty prom climax of the aforementioned Cabin Fever sequel, making the entire concept seem even more pointless than more tasteless Jonestown-sploitation like Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive!. 
Video
Shot in high definition with the Canon C300, The Sacrament is deigned to look slicker than typical found footage as the work of a professional photojournalism videographer with underexposure noise more overt in the night scenes and in deep shadows to give some verisimilitude to the locations, with the image maintaining clarity even as the camerawork becomes more shaky during the climax in which characters are fleeing for their lives. Second Sight's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 Blu-ray looks pretty much the same as Magnolia Pictures' 2014 U.S. Blu-ray even with a bit more breathing space on a BD50 that it shares with more extras. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that is mostly front-oriented given the filming framework but the soundstage widens for some underscore including the tonally-jarring but not unpleasant deployment of The Knife's "Heartbeat" during the opening credits sequence. Optional English HoH subtitles are included. 
Extras
Second Sight has not carried over the Magnolia extras; as such, we have no commentary track with West and cast members Seimetz and Bowen or the tiresome AXS TV EPK extras; however, Second Sight has produced five new interviews, a video essay, and a documentary. In "Indie Guys at Heart" (30:18), actor Bowen puts the film in the context of the rise of VICE as an internet zine and their travel guides, revealing that West asked him to create a "VICE guide" to show the investors that he could play a character who has to constantly interact with the camera, for which he created a "VICE guide to sobriety." He also notes that West intended the Jonestown story initially as a miniseries but that it was in movie form when Bowen signed on, his disappointment that the film was going to be shot in his home state of Georgia when it had initially been intended to be shot in Hawaii, and that Roth was only involved in-name only but that both West and Roth were using the same new Canon camera to film projects at the same time (Roth's being The Green Inferno which purported to be inspired by Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust but actually played like a remake of Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox with a xenophobic bent). "The Best Pathway" (10:02) is an interview with Swanberg who discusses his friendship with West, the free labor he contributed both as an actor and an operator, and the challenge of trying to achieve the same movements with the prop Handycam he is seen using in the film and the forty-pound Canon rig he was actually operating when he was off-camera. "An Ecstatic State" (14:47) is an interview with Seimetz who met West through Swanberg. Defining herself as a filmmaker first and an actress second, she was accustomed to other actors knowing her scripted dialogue but had doubts about her own abilities when acting for West who was less improvisational than Swanberg and herself as directors.  "The Itch to Act" (13:18) is an interview with Jones who reveals that for a long time the only recognizable films on his filmography were the Ken Burns documentaries he did for PBS, and that while No Country for Old Men opened up a better class of auditions for him, The Sacrament actually lead to more jobs. He discusses adapting his process to working with West, his admiration for the director, the eighteen pages of dialogue he had for the interview sequence, and finding it easier as an actor to interact with both the camera and his character's followers than trying to ignore the presence of the camera in more conventional film work. "A Wild Ride" (25:25) is an interview with producer Peter Phok who recalls meeting West at the School for Visual Arts and bonding over movies back in the VHS days, himself and West being tutored by filmmaker Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy) and developing a relationship with Larry Fessenden (Habit) which lead to him producing West's first films The Roost and Trigger Man for Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix company followed by West's House of the Devil and The Innkeepers as part of a slate of Dark Sky productions before The Sacrament. "Truthiness: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on The Sacrament" (10:47) is a video essay examining the emergence of the term "truthiness" which relies more on "intuitive vibes" than documented fact applied principally to political propaganda and the emergence of the found footage genre, VICE magazine immersionism, and YouTube's dissemination of a certain type of video documentation that itself was becoming part of the lexicon of the found footage genre during the time of the West film. "Were Not Sinners Here: The Making of The Sacrament" (59:03) is a new documentary consisting entirely of behind the scenes footage and talking heads from the time of the film's production presumably some of it was the source for some of the Magnolia and AXS TV featurettes on earlier editions which gives viewers a look at West at work available nowhere else on the disc as well as a look at the locations and some sequences from other camcorders that give a different impression than the graded film. 
Packaging
The limited edition comes in a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Chris Malbon with a seventy-page book featuring new essays by Anton Bitel, Kat Hughes, Rich Johnson and Beth Kelly, as well as six collectors' art cards. A standard edition is also available without the paper extras.
Overall
More miss than hit in Ti West's uneven career, The Sacrament does at least show him in a more experimental phase of his career trying different approaches and frameworks to the genre.
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