In my household, growing up, we were not allowed to do anything Christmas-related until after my mother's birthday at the end of November. I still cringe at shops that put decorations up, it seems, at the stroke of midnight on Halloween, and avoid the sound of Mariah Carey like the plague. But I gladly make an exception to watch the trailer Jenn Wexler's Christmas horror film, The Sacrifice Game.
The Blackvale School for Girls, 1971. It's bad enough that students Samantha (Madison Baines) and Clara (Georgia Acken) can't go home for the holidays, but things take a deadly turn when a gang of cult killers arrives at their doorstep—just in time for Christmas.
Wexler has already shown a flair for period horror with her first feature The Ranger, and she and co-screenwriter Sean Redlitz look to be embracing an analogue era where being cut off from the world at the holidays could mean your death - either from cold or a wandering band of murderous satan-worshiping thugs, take your pick.
Our own Andrew Mack wrote in his review: "Rife with menacing and heartless villains which often leads to killer gore it is a great horror flick from start to finish … Refusing to work solely with horror's conventions, Wexler and Redlitz shake things up, lifting this horror film free from the depths of normality." (and it was shot in my town of Montréal, so extra points for that).
The Sacrifice Game starts streaming on Shudder on December 8th. Check out the trailer below.