The Sacrament (2013, Ti West)

Ti West's films have been a little hit-and-miss for me. I thought "House of the Devil" was a dull, overrated 'throwback', but I dug "The Innkeepers" for the most part and "Cabin Fever 2" was an enjoyable splat-fest. I really wasn't all that interested in "The Sacrament", however, due to my immense exasperation with the whole 'mockumentary' craze that has been dominating the horror genre these days, though it had been recommended to me by a few reliable reviewers so I figured... what could it hurt? Well, to be honest, this wasn't as innocuous as I expected, although I was far from blown away...

It follows a VICE crew as they travel to a utopian community to track down one of the journalist's sister. In the meantime, while doing their exposé on the seemingly content residents of the supposedly peaceful grounds, they soon uncover a sordid Jonestown-type of situation going down.

I guess what makes "The Sacrament" one of the better 'found footage' movies as of late is the inclusion of the timely and culturally relevant investigative journalism team, VICE, which I'd say adds more of a palpable purpose for the documentary 'illusion' they're trying to fabricate. Not to say that there aren't your typical moments (quite a few I picked out) that defy logic as to how/why certain circumstances are supposedly being captured on camera. That being said, another favorable quality I found was that the FF format seems to inexplicably come and go from time to time, allowing me - the biased viewer - to suppress the POV concept that I have come to loathe.

As far as the plot and everything, it's actually pretty engaging and the performances are believable - namely, the Jim Jones-esque "Father" character who was pretty intense and creepy. And the whole Eden Parish colony was well established and made for a adequately tense and unsettling setting.

Again, the whole 'found footage' thing works better here than in most other films of this kind I have seen in recent years, but it still tends to get in the way as always, I thought. Still, I gotta consider "The Sacrament" one of the better of it's kind and definitely one of Ti West's stronger flicks. Certainly blows Kevin Smith's pretentious mess "Red State" out of the water, in terms of religious cult-themed horror films. It hasn't turned me around on the FF genre, as a whole, but this is the best I've seen this type of thing 'work' in a while...