Sacrament, The (2013) d. Ti West (USA)
Utterly pedestrian, nonsensical, and cinematically frustrating retelling of the Jim Jones/People’s Temple massacre where over 900 American civilians lost their lives in 1978 in Guyana, either courtesy of the gun-toting camp guardians or by their own cyanide-laced Kool-Aid-bearing hands. More irritating than the uninspired appropriation of this real-life tragedy is writer/director West’s decision to tell the story “documentary-style” (a clear attempt to avoid the “found-footage” stamp, but let’s face it, that’s what it is), a formal choice that yields nothing except that which is lazy and sloppy.
