The Sacrament

This might be the best found footage movie I’ve ever seen. And it still only hits 6/10. For once, the found footage premise makes sense, because hey, it’s not actually found footage! It’s a mockumentary! It gives context to why someone always has a camera rolling and the scenes are well lit and have ample sound coverage! And I found the character work to be good. It’s one of Ti West’s strengths. Father, especially, has an awesome interview with one of the documentarians that gives you a window into him both as the charismatic pseudo-prophet and deceptive cult leader. And while you probably have an idea how it will end, the movie captures the insanity and depravity of the cult’s demise. Where the movie fails, however, is being not just thinly veiled but a carbon copy of life itself. It isn’t just inspired by the Jonestown massacre, it is more or less the story of it. Small details are different — a documentary instead of a senator’s visit sets off the mass suicide — but it is so close to the real thing, Father looks like Jim Jones (with a few extra years and pounds). They use poisoned punch. Father uses lines Jones said, such as calling the act “revolutionary suicide” and “stepping over the line”, and rather than drinking the punch, shoots himself. It’s so close, you have to wonder why West didn’t just make a biopic instead, and it leaves the movie without its own identity beyond its format. It leaves me giving the movie a slight recommendation; it has style and tension, but it doesn’t know where to draw the line with authenticity. Hooptober 2022 movie #7/31