The Sacrament (2014)

Generous 3.0 here. I really like Ti West. House of the Devil was awesome, and Innkeepers is one of my favorite horror movies from the past few years. Knowing about the Jonestown massacre makes this one extra-creepy, and the short running time works in its favor. Gene Jones slays. Too many missteps though. The Vice angle is the only excuse I can think of for using music (they score/soundtrack their docu-shorts, I'm pretty sure) and it makes the found-footage thing way too plastic. Maybe it's just me but I can't stand pretty much any kind of "Be careful out there boys: you wouldn't wanna walk into the wrong place..." horror trope dialogue. Most everything here is coming from a good place; you can tell Ti West really cares about what he does (tho never moreso than with Innkeepers), but this probably needed more time to simmer/bubble around in his head. Can't help but notice it's his first movie produced by Eli Roth. I have this vision of them meeting a few months before production, getting drunk in Eli's apartment and coming up with the idea. Still better than most horror movies churned out