A Sacrifice

There's a certain appeal to a movie addressing the dangers of community only a few years after we were forcibly separated (at least physically) from our communities for a substantial period of time. Finding a group who accepts you for you is a powerful experience, and forges bonds that you won't break lightly. Add in a dash of despair or a particular moment of crisis, and the situation is ripe for an unscrupulous person to exploit for their own gain, slowly driving you to support or even engage in more and more behaviors you never would have condoned before.

These mechanics are of course utilized by cults¹. We most associate them with organizing around religious beliefs, although self-improvement focused cults of personality are probably more common in modern pop culture (and the news). Collectives of people banding together to achieve a specific goal don't quite meet this definition, as they tend to be more narrowly focused, and more importantly don't demand loyalty to the exclusion of everything else. Environmental activist groups, even some of the more extreme ones, wouldn't qualify for this reason. But it's not hard to imagine the leap from the widespread nihilism about the state of the world so prevalent online to these more dangerous beliefs, especially as they promise an individual contribution towards a positive outcome that seems so daunting².

These two threads weave together in the form of Ben (Eric Bana) and his daughter Mazzy (Sadie Sink). With his first book on isolation and loneliness having been a huge success, Ben is in Berlin researching a follow up on the perils of groupthink. Newly divorced, he takes a shine to Nina (Sylvia Hoeks), the leader of a police unit investigating cult activity. Meanwhile, Mazzy comes to stay with him for the summer, and experiences her own fling in the form of Martin (Jonas Dassler). Martin just lost his grandmother (Daphna Rosenthal), but has been receiving emotional support from an environmental group he frequents, helmed by the warm and charming Hilda (Sophie Roos). You already know this is going to go bad, not only from my opening paragraphs, but from the early stages of the film. It's made very clear to us that the mass suicide Nina is investigating consists of members of Hilda's group. So the mystery at this film's core centers on what their ultimate plan is, and the tension comes from us wondering how long it will take Mazzy to realize their true nature and Ben to notice his daughter slipping away.

There's a lot of opportunity here to play out the hopelessness and despair that many express online. I tend to think that reaction to the world is warranted, but even if you don't, the feelings are real. so there's no reason to doubt the possibility for it to lead to extreme action. Why not explore that through film? While Hilda's group represents the end point, there's no attempt at a journey to bring us into this mindset. Martin is already fully bought in, Lotte (Lara Feith) is barely a character, and Mazzy's journey is not one of much interiority, driven mostly by frustration at her lack of connection to her father. We don't get any sense of what she thinks of the group, and she seems to view the die-in she attends with Martin as an excuse to spend time with him. We do see her listening to Hilda's "sermons" attentively, but given Sink's relatively narrow set of emotions in those moments and the absence of conversation afterwards, we don't gain much understanding of how they're impacting her. Which drains away part of the value a story like this could have.

It doesn't help that Ben gets too absorbed in his work (and his romance) to notice the warning signs. It's a large part of what led to his divorce, and to an incident when Mazzy was nearly swept away by a rip tide as a child, which you'd better believe they continue to harken back to as a metaphor for the current situation. As that implies, this film lacks subtlety. Just about everything is textual and blunt, with most of the reveals being telegraphed from a mile away. The closest they get to a light touch is the frequent background presence of people in crowds holding signs which say things like "Sacrifice is redemption", one of the group's oft-repeated mantras.

The plotting and pacing of this thing is a mess overall. In addition to seeing Ben and Mazzy's perspective, we spend significant time with Martin: although his story's screentime is far less, its weight and importance nearly qualifies him as a main character. The split alone dilutes the events on screen, especially as what we really want to know more about is Hilda and her quasi-religious beliefs. Director Jordan Scott really takes her time dispensing what's going on, giving us basically nothing except vague hints that Nina knows more about Hilda than she lets on, until we're hit by a dizzying wall of exposition all at once. In a ten minute span, everything that's been simmering below the surface is throw at us in one "villain explains their plan" exposition dump and one truly bizarre (and annoyingly convenient) flashback montage. The worst part is that it's incredibly unsatisfying. You'll roll your eyes while thinking "I guess that works", right before another set of questions crytalize before you, only to realize they're the same ones as before. Such an extended piece of writing spilling its guts in front of us still failing to quell some fundamental questions implies the screenwriter didn't know the answer either, and hoped to distract us with volume. It didn't work.

The best thing I can point to are the performances. The direction isn't all that great, but when the actors are allowed to do their thing, they nail it. Sink especially benefits from the scenes she's allowed to go for it, whereas Hoeks is doing solid if unremarkable work throughout. The closest to a standout is Rois, who captures the magnetic warmth of a cult leader exceptionally well, with just the right amount of sinisterness that her later turn is entirely consistent. She does an admirable job holding this movie together as best she can, coming as close to making the cult believable as possible, but it's just too big of an ask. Like the movie, the cult is unwieldy, nebulous, and has some solid ideas but no idea how to effectively execute them so as to accomplish what they set out to do. We see the destination, but not how we're going to get there. Which could almost be seen as a meta-commentary on the movie itself!

Almost.