Review: Sacrifice

Digital: Sacrifice (2020)

6 weeks away from the birth of their first child, Isaac (Ludovic Hughes) and Emma (Sophie Stevens) travel from America to a remote Norwegian village after the death of a family member there.

They are soon looked after by local policewoman Renate (Barbara Crampton), who, along with her daughter, want to make Isaac and Emma’s stay as comfortable as possible.

The villagers are at first not so welcoming towards them, but upon discovering that Isaac is originally from there, soon change their attitude and treat them as one of their own.

Dark secrets slowly rise to the surface, and a sinister cult that worships a sea-dwelling deity make the couple a target of their attention.

With beautiful landscapes and the always watchable Barbara Crampton, there are elements to enjoy about Sacrifice, however its slow and meandering narrative, along with a predictable ending, meant that I was never fully engaged with the characters or their predicaments.

Lovecraftian horror is a difficult one to translate from page to screen, especially it seems (at least in my viewing experiences) anything remotely Cthulhu based.

While there are moments of impending dread, these are negated by characters that I didn’t really care what happened to them.

One for the Lovecraftian completists.

Review by Dave from a streaming link kindly supplied by 101 Films via Aim Publicity.