Dennis Harvey Film Critic An academic’s visiting teenage daughter falls under the sway of a sinister cult connected to his own research in “A Sacrifice.” Suspended between straightforward thriller and something loftier, Jordan Scott’s sophomore feature — headlined by Sadie Sink and Eric Bana — is a slick but unsatisfying narrative muddle.
It has the feel of a literary adaptation that doesn’t quite translate to a different medium: While the individual thematic elements are intriguing enough, they just don’t come together on screen in sufficiently coherent or atmospheric form.
The result is a movie that ultimately falls short on both suspense and ideas, though it remains watchable enough. Vertical is releasing to U.S.
theaters on June 28. Other territories will be seeing it under the title “Berlin Nobody,” while English author Nicholas Hogg’s source novel was called (and is set in) “Tokyo.” So one can safely assume Scott, whose career has primarily been in commercial brand campaigns, took considerable liberties with that material.
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