Movie Review: A SACRIFICE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: June 28th, 2024 / 09:50 AM

A SACRIFICE movie review | ©2024 Vertical

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Eric Bana, Sadie Sink, Sylvia Hoeks, Jonas Dassler, Sophie Rois, Stephan Kampwirth, Lara Feith
Writer: Jordan Scott, based on the novel TOKYO by Nicholas Hogg
Director: Jordan Scott
Distributor: Vertical
Release Date: June 28, 2024

A SACRIFICE has a promising enough start for a thriller. Ben Monroe (Eric Bana) is an American social psychologist in Berlin, researching a new book. His last bestseller was on the dangers of being isolated by loneliness; the work in progress is on the perils of false community.

Ben’s colleague, university professor Max (Stephan Kampwirth), invites him to the site of what looks like a cult group suicide. Their police liaison is Nina Hoffman (Sylvia Hoeks), affiliated with law enforcement but not actually a detective.

Meanwhile, Ben’s sixteen-year-old daughter Mazzy (Sadie Sink) arrives in Berlin from San Diego to spend the summer with her dad. Ben and his ex-wife had an acrimonious breakup.

Mazzy is befriended by a cute local boy, Martin (Jonas Dassler), on the train from the airport. She is none too thrilled that her mom has found romance, and is hoping for supportive attention from Ben. When Ben is a little preoccupied by work, Mazzy starts exploring Berlin.

So far, so good. Except we keep hearing more about this cult, which on the one hand doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge its relationship to various suicides, and on the other hand keeps talking about the need to protect the planet. Their motto is, “Sacrifice is redemption, we return to source so She may live.” “She” presumably is Mother Earth, but there is not much direct correlation made between the suicides and saving the planet. We don’t see what it is the cultists are doing while alive to reduce their own harmful footprint and they don’t appear to be doing outreach to persuade non-cult members to aid the planet.

Maybe this is what we’re meant to deduce, that the cult is all talk/need for community and no conviction. However, here’s the thing: there are definitely cults that recruit and get their members to self-harm or even commit suicide. But these are usually either religious or explicitly political. Yes, a cult based in ecology would definitely have appeal to a certain segment of the population, even if we never see exactly what they’re doing that’s so eco-friendly to get people to join in the first place.

Setting this aside, the logic glitches grow as A SACRIFICE proceeds. There doesn’t seem much point in a cult creating a mass suicide, then not explain to the public that it’s to protest X, Y or Z. Likewise, the cult leader first flipping out that the media is publicizing that one of their member’s bodies has been discovered in a certain place, and then directing someone to take a kidnap victim to that place, defies common sense.

We eventually get that Ben is meant to be a literary celebrity, but this isn’t woven into the story framework. This would not be a problem, except that it turns into a major if very improbable plot point.

Finally, there’s an injection of the supernatural toward the end, when a character is moved to action by a vision of someone they don’t know. This feels a little late in the day to introduce a different level of reality.

Director Jordan Scott, who loosely adapted the screenplay from Nicholas Hogg’s novel TOKYO (which was set in Japan), has a nice visual style, making the most of the city, and gets good performances from leads Bana, Sink, and Dassler.

But A SACRIFICE seems, like Ben, to want to say something about the dangers of both loneliness and an overpowering need to belong. These are valid points, but there’s too much preventing suspension of disbelief here for us to contemplate them seriously in this context.

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