As a sub-genre, found footage was (I say “was” because, with the odd exception, the boom seems to be long dead) in some ways the punk rock of cinema — the phenomenal success of The Blair Witch Project was Spiral Scratch’s “here’s three chords, now form a band” but for horror, and with cameras and actors instead of chords.
But, as with punk, you still needed the drive and creativity. Everyone who saw that movie thought “whoah, I could do that!”, but it turned out most of the ones who tried couldn’t. As a result, there was a deluge of FF movies, ranging from shit to awesome, but with most entries in the genre falling towards the more faecal end of the spectrum and bringing the average down. Ironically, one of the other entries I’d have called “awesome” was Cloverfield, which, well, had a massive budget to start with.
Towards the end of FF’s reign came Ti West’s The Sacrament, which is definitely at the more awesome end of things, and is one of the few I’d save as an example of what CAN be done with the format. Nobody can accuse West of lacking ambition or creativity (I’ve been a fan since accidentally stumbling across 2009’s amazing The House Of The Devil, and honestly think he’s one of the most exciting directors currently working in American horror, though imho he hasn’t yet made the actual masterpiece I believe he is more than capable of, while I have yet to see either Pearl or MaXXXine; so who knows, maybe he has), and what The Sacrament lacks in budget it more than makes up for in sheer balls.Perhaps its ballsiest move is in positing a world where the Jonestown Massacre never happened, because that’s where we are, in a twenty-first century Jonestown with the serial numbers filed off (even down to a smaller-scale landing strip shootout). Which allows West to do some neat things. The sense of audience complicity was always a part of what made FF work (when it did), and here that’s heightened because we as the audience know EXACTLY where this is going from fairly early on, while our characters — two journos from Vice magazine and a guy who wants to visit his sister at a utopian jungle commune — are blissfully unaware until things start going tits-up. The camera doesn’t linger on the barrels of chemicals in the background of one scene, for example, because why would it? But our eyes do.
It kinda falls somewhere between FF and mockumentary, tbh, largely by dint of the guerrilla film-making tactics of the fictional documentarians — and, of course, the tonal shift that occurs about half way through.So we start off in full mockumentary mode, but as things progress we get more into panicky FF territory. And, as with most FF movies, there comes a point when the movie breaks its own rules and we’re watching a movie made by the ACTUAL director rather than the characters — which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, depending largely on how believable the REAL director has made things. In this case, the shift is barely noticeable as West takes over from his characters for a denouement that is as shocking as it is expected.
Of course, even a faux Jonestown stands and falls on its Jones — who in this case is Gene Jones’s Charles Anderson Reed (or simply “Father”), who plays an absolute blinder. He doesn’t try to replicate Jones (Jim) in either appearance or manner, coming off more like a retired army colonel who’s seen and done some shit, but he has the paternal charisma (or “rizz”, as the young people would apparently say) and barely-concealed violence down to a fine art.No matter how good anyone else is (and the performances are all top-notch), one wrong step from Jones (Gene… God, this is confusing) could have sunk the whole project. By the time we get to the final sermon (which is, of course, liberally sprinkled with direct lifts from the real thing) you’re both terrified of Father and completely understanding of why so many people are following him – until, of course, the moment when some of them aren’t.
And also like West’s underrated western In The Valley Of Violence, The Sacrament is something of a hidden gem — which is a nice way of saying “why the fuck don’t more people talk about this movie? What the fuck is WRONG with you all???” But it’s getting a second chance with a shiny new blu-ray release from Second Sight Films, coming in both standard and limited editions, the latter coming in a box set with a 70-page booklet (though personally I reckon once you hit 70 pages the “-let” suffix is superfluous, that’s a whole-ass fucking book) and postcards, plus some very in-depth cast and crew interviews (including some good arguments as to why this is not a FF movie at all — but then, genres are like nicknames at school — you don’t get to choose your own).
If you slept on this movie at the time, then watch it now. If you didn’t, then watch it again — I honestly can’t recommend it highly enough. I mean, it’s kinda thematically cool that a movie about a cult is a cult movie, but, like the congregation, it deserves better.-Justin Farrington-
