When the movie business gets one of its unexpected thematic combinations between studios — as the summer of 1998 offered two “impending planetary apocalypse” films in Armageddon And Deep consequences, or 2022 gave us two major Pinocchio films – it's rarely clear on the surface whether the projects stem from corporate copy, divergent evolutions, or pure coincidence. Ultimately, it's rarely worth arguing about: what matters is whether the films are fun and well-made, and whether they show better together.
2023's best strange combination in that vein is unexpected: the moving film about Alexander Payne's found family The survivors and Jenn Wexler's creepy horror film The sacrificial gamenow on Shudder, prove to be a surprisingly apt double feature – even if they use similar storylines for very different purposes.
Both films take place within a year of each other at Christmas: The survivors in 1970, The sacrificial game in 1971. Both revolve around remote single-sex boarding schools, where a hapless teacher and a few disconsolate students are left to make what they can of the Christmas holidays after everyone else has gone on vacation. Both are built around a series of surprising revelations, with some broad archetypal characters revealing hidden layers and hidden intentions. And both show that teachers and students form surprising emotional connections with each other.
However, only one of them brings in a group of serial killers who attempt to summon a demon to claim its raw, unbridled power. If you watch the trailers for both films, you can easily guess which one.
What's especially nice about watching these two films back to back is that they are both such warm-hearted, well-intentioned films about the melancholy feeling of being left behind at Christmas, and about finding the spirit of the holiday outside of one's biological family. In The survivors, teenage troublemaker Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa, in an all-star performance) finds out just hours before his scheduled departure for a family Christmas trip that his mother and her new husband want to spend Christmas alone to rebuild their relationship, and have decided to park him at his elite boarding school for break. In The sacrificial gameSamantha (Madison Baines) has almost the exact same experience: in her case, her mother died in a car accident earlier this year, and her stepfather gradually distances himself from her, unexpectedly inviting her out of his vacation plans.
None of these young people expected to be suddenly thrown out by people they considered family, and each of them spends their own films struggling to suppress their active disappointment out of basic civility. Angus is older, angrier, and brasher than Samantha, and he channels his anger about the news much more aggressively than she does. There are also other minor differences, which read as specific gender: In The survivorsAs a teacher responsible for supervising a small group of rejected students during the holidays, short-tempered boarding school professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) tries to enforce a strict regimen of character-building physical activity and study. In The sacrificial gameThe gentle Rose (Chloë Levine) strives more for reconciliation and comfort for her sad children.
Photo: Seacia Pavao/Focus Features
And in both cases, these films complete their central trifecta with a character who helps define the theme. In The survivors, it's Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb, the school's cook, who is just mourning the recent death of her son during a military misadventure, giving both Paul and Angus a taste of how real tragedy and an actual dead end look. There is no way they can do anything about her grief, which puts their own trials into perspective. Samantha and Rose get something similar from Clara (Georgia Acken), a menacing younger girl who avoids friendship and seems to upset everyone around her, for reasons that take a while to become clear.
The two films differ greatly there, although they both feature crucial road trips. In Sacrificial gameit's an incoming group: a quartet of swaggering serial killers straight out of Quentin Tarantino's Once upon a time in Hollywood, who want to take everyone at the school hostage and use the place as a stage for a demonic ritual. In RemainsIt's an outward journey, with Paul, Angus and Mary leaving school for an impromptu Christmas visit to Boston.
Obviously these are very different films. The survivors continues to stick to the prestige film path that Payne paved the way for with films like Nebraska And The descendants, as Paul and Angus verbally circle each other, he hacks, until they each begin to see what they can gain by letting down their guard. It's a fairly relaxed film about opening up, admitting mistakes and weakness and trusting other people.
Sacrificial game, on the other hand, moves briskly through a home invasion scenario and toward a finale that injects a bit of comedic silliness into what could be a fatally dull, grim carnage. Although it features murderers who threaten children, there is a recurring theme of explicit self-harm for various reasons (besides the mutilation of innocent victims) and a significant number of deaths. Sacrificial game is a much lighter film in its own way.
Image: Shudder
But both films are notable for the way they take their characters' pretensions and flaws seriously, and the way their scripts find layers of meaning in the characters' fears and the masks they wear around different people. Sacrificial gameThe smug gang of killers each hide a host of personal conflicts, which emerge as the tension builds. It's not so different from the way Paul and Angus each have a history they lie about, and the obvious disguises (the roaring martinet and the behavioral bad boy, respectively) they use to deflect any scrutiny from a world they resent.
These films are expressly intended for different target groups. There is a grin and a wink of submerged humor in it Sacrificial game making it feel like a joke shared with the in-the-know horror audience Remains feels truly heartfelt and draws its greatest emotional moments from the characters' feelings as they brush away the rust and dust of their underdeveloped ability to be kind. Paul and Angus are both awkward people, untrained in trust, but sincere once they get the hang of it. Sacrificial game's sprawling cast mostly goes in the opposite direction.
And yet both films also feel like they're trying to subvert the idea of the Hallmark Christmas movie: the slick, predictable, poreless viewing experience where all the beats are clear from the moment the title appears on screen. They're both strange stories about strange and spiky people who can only find their holiday spirit in strange, spiky ways. These films weren't made with each other in mind, but they make a fun double feature, both for the sense of cosmic convergence and for the sense of two teams of filmmakers approaching similar ideas with similar tools, in completely different ways.
The survivors is in theaters and available now for premium digital rentals. The sacrificial game is streaming exclusively on Shudder.