Son of a Gun of a Preacher Man

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The best thing I can say about Ti West's new film The Sacrament is that it really made me want to go read up on The Jonestown Massacre - it made me realize that all I really know is an "and then they drank the Kool-Aid" outline of the most horrible historical event. West's film itself feels an awful lot like an outline in the end - it sacrifices depth of character for a found-footage you-are-there immediacy that unfortunately only sometimes works. Do know I'm not one of those anti-found-footage scolds - Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, The Tunnel, the first Paranormal Activity... the list goes on and on for times that conceit has worked gangbusters on me. 

But it's a balancing act where you've got to really convince the viewer that the world you're dropping them into is real, or real enough by its own rules, while also trying to give them people that, well, you don't necessarily have to like them (Katie and Micah are pretty gross, y'all), but you have to buy them as people. The Sacrament doesn't quite get there on either count - its world feels sketched in in vital ways. The community feels incongruous and inorganic - everybody's motivations are murky and under-sold, as if he knows the true story too well and was mentally filling in gaps that he's not cinematically making. (Relatedly the final act is dogged by logical black holes with regards to who's holding what camera where.)

The biggest problem is West leans on some of the non-professional actors too hard, especially in the final act - they weren't up to the task and they sucked me right out of any momentum he'd built up. But even the actors we know well feel a little hung out to dry by the not-quite-convincing thrust of the storytelling - I love AJ "Are you not the babysitter?" Bowen but he's tossed every which way depending on the needs of keeping the story inexplicably going in forced directions, and it shows. Amy Seimetz fares better - she knows her way around a psycho princess and back. Faring best of all is Gene Jones as the cult leader - he's let down by the wishy-washy material but he's cuts a mean halleluiah bullfrog figure; with his rousing centerpiece speech he spins nothing words into a palpable brainwash, for a hot second making even a skeptic a rattled believer. 

(And here I ought to note that when the lights came up after my screening I turned to my left and Mr. Jones was literally sitting two seats down from me in the theater - that's like watching an Elm Street movie with Robert Englund sitting right next to you the whole time. That is - Awesome!)

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