The Sacrifice Game starts off very well straight away, slow-shot and domestic assault with violence shown complete with blood and cut throats.
The setting is the 70s, leather jackets but above all it was the period of seven.

The film is set almost entirely in the High School where it is interesting that the incipit is very similar to Payne's recent The Holdovers, Samantha is forced to stay at school during the Christmas holidays together with the teacher Rosie and the mysterious girl Clara.
The shots of Clara after the killing of the sect are very good, creating a connection or rather a sort of "call".

The direction by Jenn Wexler knows how to give good shots but it needs to be written that the soundtrack is a bit too generic, it doesn't have a good effect, on the contrary, and even the construction of the tension does not yet have the right mastery.
The film focuses on the friendship that will be established between Samantha and Clara, it is it is also appreciable that the demon was imprisoned by humans and Samantha will say at the beginning of the film that the witch hunt was just a scapegoat that the society of the time was looking for; furthermore Samantha is left by her family to spend Christmas in the high school so she has a difficult family situation, she has suffered a bereavement, she is therefore "alone" like the demon. However, the film gives a different characterization of the girls present, Samantha has her problems but has "positive" attitudes, the teacher Rosie is friendly, has a boyfriend while Clara is the most enigmatic, very dark, silent.
Maddison, the girl of the sect, also has an important role in the film, she is the girl that all the male members dream of, she wants to evoke the demon because as a girl she had been approached by a dark book present in the High School.

The the problem is that the film does not explore the emotional side of the girls enough, the film could have focused more on the fact that the girls who approach darkness do so because they emerge and create stronger bonds.
Let's be clear, this is there And; However, Maddison's character remains too much on the surface and even in the finale, due to the role he has, he is not exploited too properly.
If instead the closure between Samantha and Clara is effective and also offers an ending that is not too obvious for this kind of film, their bond over the course of the film could have had greater strength.

In the third, with the characters linked at the table, there are ample references to Texas Chainsaw Massacre/ Don't Open the Door, also because the film plays a bit on "dirty" tones.

If it is true that there is no shortage of blood and violence, they are not always well managed, the most effective sequence remains the opening one as well as some moments of the demon that do not has a good performance.
While the last shot with the girls shaking hands is very cute and also "sinister" in a certain respect.

It's a low budget horror that has its defects, there are no half marks here so I still prefer to give a passing grade to this type of film also because there is something nice about it and it's nice to see new directors entering the horror genre perhaps hoping that Wexler can improve in the future.< 2>