Berlin Nobody

Eric Bana and Sadie Sink sulk their way through Berlin Nobody, a drab cult thriller given the far less tantalizing title "A Sacrifice" for North American distribution. Bana is an American professor in Berlin working on a complicated thesis about cult mindset and dangerous groupthink, unaware that his teenage daughter (Sink) is slowly orbiting the very same deadly cult via a German boy (Jonas Dasser) she's started seeing. Bana is a brilliant actor who doesn't always choose the best scripts and this is unfortunately one of them, Stranger Things' talented Sink also falling into the same trap. They try to do honest character work but the writing lets them down hard, attempting some complex thematics regarding the cut angle that get left completely open ended like they just gave up in fully exploring their ideas and let the credits roll. Skip.

Traditional cult movies involve satanic or religious cults. Out with the old in with the new. As those two previous mentioned categories fade further and further away from the forefront of people's minds, the more relevant environmental cult, is more fitting for a modern audience.

Unlike some cult movies the leader's sole purpose isn't necessarily gathering as many followers as possible to do slave work, make her rich or even powerful. The environmentalist cult agenda is that Earth comes first and people are killing the earth. Therefore, people need to die quickly so that the earth can heal. A Doomsday Cult.

PRO: The movie does a good job at showing you how people that feel lost and are searching for something, can easily fall prey to people who just want to further their cause.

CON: The movie progresses way too fast. You barely get to know the characters and then boom the end. The ending is also predictable, although there is a slight twist with some characters.

This movie is 96 % talking....not character development talking, not building a plotline talking, just talking. Randomly. There are many conversations that goes no where and does not enhances the story.

Motivation: The movie never establishes the motivations to make people do what they do. They make decisions to satisfy the story without letting us know why they are making that decision.

Direction/Acting...in the few scenes that do contain some level of drama, the actors overact the scene which means yelling, gesturing loudly and walking out of rooms.

Lastly...boring. The first 20 minutes did little to pique my interest and even make me want to finish the movie. I should have gone with that instinct and saves myself 90 minutes of my life.

Well I just got done watching this movie and I feel like I've seen this movie before because I have seen this movie before.

Positives for A Sacrifice (2024): The performances from Sadie Sink and Eric Bana are pretty good for the most part. I did have some investment in what was happening in the story. And that's about it for positives.

Negatives for A Sacrifice (2024): Like I said before, this is a movie and a premise that I've seen many times before and it's plays out the exact same way as those other movies. It also feels like this movie could've been directed by anyone and yet it was directed by Jordan Scott, the daughter of legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott.

Overall, A Sacrifice (2024) is as generic as these cult thriller movie can get and nothing new is brought to the table.

6.4 stars.

This film is very well made, but the execution is clumsy. The music is outstanding and I have to comment on it, because it evokes a pretty scary feeling. The acting is tolerable and the direction is wonderful, the lighting and camera work is without fault. Okay, so what could be wrong with this movie if I've just praised every aspect of it? Well, I didn't give any accolades for the script and the story itself. The story is repetitive, and so this is just the same film done a million times, but the only difference for me is that it was done in Germany, which gives it just a smidge feeling of something "different". The script is atrocious and there is no way they could make this a very entertaining film. Some of the characters are not believable and just too weird, so there is no sense of authenticity. It's too robotic at times and wooden at times.

I assume since the setting is Germany that most of the actors are German. However, the two main characters are Americans.

It's a movie about a cult and it's obviously a Satanic one. There are some apparitions and after life visions and odd stuff like that and it's an eerie experience for sure. I think the whole film was done so well, I just wish they had a better script and a bit more originality.

Bana's character is supposedly an absentee father, but unfortunately he was a bit absentee with his acting. I said most of the acting was good, but strangely enough, the Americans left something to be desired. The Germans stole the show.

This film is not quite good enough for me to want to ever see it again, therefore it must fall below 7, but I can't say it's any less than 6.4, because it's a really accomplished presentation outside of the flat script.