Pops Saw a Movie: THE SACRAMENT

 For me, “found footage” films only ever worked once, and that was the original, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Every one I’ve seen since then has just required too much suspension of disbelief to accept that the protagonists just kept the cameras rolling enough to fill out a three-act story. 

But that’s just one of the issues with Ti West’s THE SACRAMENT (2013), as lazy a piece of filmmaking as I’ve ever seen. I imagine the filmmakers sitting around saying, “Hey, you think enough time has passed that nobody remembers the Jonestown Massacre anymore? Why don’t we just tell that story and change almost nothing? And we’ll do it as found footage so we don’t have to give any backstory or fill in the blanks.” I was astounded at how rote this movie was, and being an old person who DOES remember Jim Jones, once I realized what was happening, the ending was a foregone conclusion. 

But perhaps most egregiously, in one scene, our “heroes” (who are reporters from… heh… VICE) defend themselves after being accused of having a bias by saying, “…we don’t spin things. We try be honestly subjective.”

….Seriously? Not one person caught this? It’s rare that a single line of dialogue lays bare the laziness inherent in an entire project, but there ya have it. 

The one and only saving grace of this snooze fest is Gene Jones as “Father,” the ersatz Jim Jones. But you’ll remember him as the gas station owner who won the coin toss in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I pretended it was the same guy. It made it a little easier to get through.

Originally posted on social media, May 1, 2023