Today’s mainstream studio-driven genre cinema seems to oscillate between tired and derivative franchise fare and big budget slick and stylish overly long ‘elevated horror’. There’s a huge dearth in creativity, imagination or originality, but this is what cinema audiences seem to want. Poke a little deeper and you’ll find a hugely diverse, fresh and vibrant independent industry, which is probably the strongest it has ever been. Very few of these films will be better than Sator.
Buried deep in the middle of a remote forest lives a family torn asunder by the past, present and future. With a mysterious death fresh in his mind, Adam (Gabriel Nicholson) searches for answers in the quiet isolation. With only his Nani’s (June Peterson) audio tapes to guide him, he begins to hunt Sator; a malignant demon who has been observing and subtly influencing his family over a number of years.
Sator is a very personal project for Jordan Graham, who directs, writes, produces, scores, lenses and edits. Inspired by his own experiences of growing up in a family with a history of mental illness and taking over half a decade to come to fruition, he weaves home video into his picture; blurring the lines between fact and fiction. This helps to create a darkly atmospheric, unsettling, eerie and organic horror. Not since Lukas Feigelfeld’s Hagazussa has there been such a perturbing, foreboding and naturally terrifying experience. Sator is the first great horror of the 2020s.
Sator will be available on Digital Download from February 15th and on DVD from February 22nd.
