Sacrifice (2016)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Radha Mitchell, Rupert Graves, Ian McElhinney
Directed by Peter A. Dowling
There are times when you come across a film that, according to first looks, appears to be something solid that you’ve set your mind upon, premise-wise, and after watching the movie, you realize that what you’d thought was completely the opposite… not exactly a bad thing in retrospect, but then there are those exceptions. Case in point: Peter A. Dowling’s Sacrifice.
The film stars Radha Mitchell as a consult surgeon who has suffered a traumatic miscarriage, and while feeling like there’s nothing left for her in this continent, she jumps over to the Shetland Islands with her hubby (Graves) to adopt a child and start the family they’ve so desperately wanted. Shortly after their arrival and settling into their spatial new digs, a rather unsettling discovery is made: that of a mummified woman with multiple etchings carved into her flesh, and a gaping hole where a child would have been carried. Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves quite the mystery.
Here’s where I mentioned the whole “assumed premise” theory – upon first inspection, I’d pegged this as somewhat of an eerie thriller; yet, after checking it out, it definitely falls into the “mainline mystery” subject area. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I’d honestly hoped for more than a doctor attempting to play detective for 90+ minutes.
Another issue that I had with the film was after the good doc had suffered the loss of her unborn child, the film simply whisked away to Scotland, almost severing itself from what got us all here – almost a “she’s here, now she’s here” scenario with no ground underneath it. Mitchell serves well as a woman who’s undergone quite a bit, but with the abandonment of her backstory, this just felt like a nosy doc who gathered facts and figures – lots of them – for a large portion of the film.
Don’t look forward to an avalanche of chills and thrills with this one either – for all intents and purposes, this will definitely appeal to those looking for a decent crime/mystery presentation, but the horror… oh, where has the horror gone?
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
