On the DVD for Shawn Ewert’s Sacrament there’s a short film of the same name, a scene from the film which, out of context, purely exists to facilitate a gruesome escape from a flatly-lit cellar. It’s surprising that both exist to be honest, since the short is little more than a shock, and the film flaunts almost no dramatic tension at all.
Sacrament sports some great opening credits; macabre images of Deep-South iconography paint a terrifying picture whilst ‘Old Time Religion’ rings jubilantly over the display. It sets a mood that the film seems to have issues properly embracing. Ewert deserves some credit for making a gay couple the centre focus and for presenting full-frontal male nudity in the opening minutes- which is still a bizarre point of trepidation for audiences and censors alike. Though casting isn’t an issue here, it’s a varied mix of ethnicities and sizes which is still a point of celebration in the contemporary landscape. That, and Marilyn Burns of course.
The veteran scream queen, Sally Hardesty in Tobe Hooper’s seminal slasher The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, makes her final screen appearance in Sacrament, but it’s not nearly enough. Considering Ewert’s film is little more than a tracing of an homage, Burns’ involvement is cute, but perhaps detrimental to the individuality of the feature. Back in 2005, 2001 Maniacs played the southern hospitality schlocky horror comedy card pretty perfectly, but was itself a remake of Two Thousand Maniacs from renowned splatter godfather Herschell Gordon Lewis, which was adapted from Brigadoon.
So the whole southern horror thing, in this cannibalistic format, is a tough nut to crack and an even harder one to give fresh voice to since it appears swamped by classics in one way or another. The story of Wickerman in the South is reinvented for different audiences, though Sacrament doesn’t understand its message well enough to really have any point or new ground to cover. One or two intense murders, paired with the lack of great gore or vivid filmmaking leaves this venture slumped deeper in the pile of bargain basement rip-offs.
Ewert’s decision to pretty much bin the staunch black comedy of previous ventures and stick to a more solid, though still exploitative, thriller avenue is an inconsistent one. Technically the film is dull and clunky, but there’s some heart and soul in the characters which allows for moments of intensity the rest of the film can’t match.
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