West's found-footage structure doesn't always entirely make sense, but it's easy to forgive "The Sacrament" its flaws.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 26, 2014

The first half is a cautiously dread-inducing tour de force... The second half, however, when all hell breaks loose a little too quickly, is the disappointment.

| Jun 13, 2014

Everything that happens is what you'd expect, and the choice of subject and the modifications West has made to the generic conventions don't add much to the suspense or thrills.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 12, 2014

The Sacrament may not be a good movie, but it has enough virtues - enough gripping, well-put-together moments - that it made me reconsider my opinion of West as a director.

| Jun 6, 2014

The tension fizzles as The Sacrament narrows into predictability, indulging every clich of found-footage filmmaking and Jonestown-styled cult apocalypticism.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2014

Gives enough unsettling atmosphere and upsetting gut-level shock that this viewer didn't mind too much all the stuff he wasn't getting ...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 6, 2014

A masterclass in unsettling chills from West, lit up by another strong Seimetz turn.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 6, 2014

Shifts from the unnerving to the hollow after it becomes evident that Mr. West is more interested in showing how his characters die than how they lived.

| Jun 5, 2014

When this device works, it works well. When it doesn't, one finds oneself sighing a lot as the movie rolls onward.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 5, 2014

A marked disappointment.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2014

The aim and the conceit distract from director Ti West's execution.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 5, 2014

One of America's most exciting young directors delivers half of a great movie with this investigation into religious cults.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2014

Only Jones seems most at home, striking just the right note of low-key malevolence. You'd follow him anywhere-maybe even into a better movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 3, 2014

The Sacrament infuses the past with ghoulish immediacy.

| Jun 3, 2014

Ti West may possess one of the most compelling voices in horror, but the wit and originality that characterised his earlier films is all but absent.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 3, 2014

With The Sacrament, director Ti West has bitten off more of a premise than his classically modest barebones approach to horror movies can presently chew.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 1, 2014

[...] While The Sacrament affirms West's talent and versatility, the film's basic conceit is a failure of taste, alluding so heavily to the 1978 Jonestown massacre that it feels like a ghoulish recreation of history.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 5, 2014

goes all Cannibal Holocaust on its rapidly evolving situation, leaving us to wonder how much the presence of the media has contributed to the horrifically tragic outcome.

| Nov 1, 2013

It's not just bad, it's infuriating.

| Original Score: 1.5/10 | Sep 12, 2013

A bone-chilling genre piece about religious fanaticism taken to deadly extremes.

| Sep 11, 2013