Sin Eater

"Sin Eater" suffers from uneven acting and a predictable storyline that offers much hope but ultimately commits the ultimate sin for a film – being uninteresting.

So far in 2022, my luck with horror films hasn't been the best. I've been looking for something to satisfy that gnawing hunger for some blood and gore and hoped that "Sin Eater" would reverse that trend and satisfy that hunger. However, I find myself hungrier than ever with "Sin Eater" failing to live up to my hopes.

When we first meet Christine (Jessie Nerud), she's just been in an accident that has thrown her from her vehicle and left her with significant injuries to her jaw and face and another young woman dead on the road. Local sheriff Isaac (Danny Bohnen) comes upon the accident and reports back to an unknown voice on the radio that one is dead and that "we have a live one." Curious things are happening in the small town of Gideon, New York.

When we next see Christine, she wakes with her jaw wired shut, not in the hospital but in the upstairs room in Isaac's house with his brother Elijah (Scotty Bohnen) making his check on her. To complete the creepy family dynamic, we're introduced to Abraham (Scott Moore), the overly friendly family patriarch whose easy smile and calm voice are a tell-tale sign that something sinister is on its way.

From there, things get even weirder. Christine encounters Isaac's young daughter in another upstairs room. She has a conversation that raises more red flags about the town's "own special kind of religion." Still, when she mentions this at the dinner table, the entire family is visibly upset as Isaac explains his daughter went missing years ago.

With each passing day, Christine feels that her grasp on reality is slipping away as she hears things in the walls, believes the town's citizens are watching her and nightmares from her past come back to haunt her once again.

The dark secrets of the town of Gideon start the reveal themselves when she discovers an earring in the basement of the house that belongs to the young woman she gave a ride to that died in the car crash. And we find that Christine might have darkness within that will eclipse it all.

I'm not sure what to say about this movie. Many elements seem very cool on the surface and some really good scenes in the film, especially a nice creepy mirror scene - those never get old. The only significant bloody moment is at the beginning with the accident and a little at the end, but nothing much else. The worst part is the predictable storyline for the Christine character.

Another annoying thing is a few shoehorned scenes to explain things, especially what a sin-eater is. As Elijah and Isaac have a brief fight, Christine is able to use Elijah's phone to do a few web searches and watch a mini-documentary that spells it all out. Boring.

The film is a slow roller, and I found myself constantly waiting for the film to take off and all hell breaks loose, but it never happened. Even the ending when Christine is trying to escape is perhaps the slowest attempt I've seen of someone trying to flee a group intent on killing them. I kept waiting for a big payoff and expected a great twist at the end – nothing. The ending is telegraphed early on and it never deviates. The film has an interesting final couple of minutes visually, but it's too little too late.

Twin brothers Scotty and Danny Bohnen played well off each other, helping make the brotherly back and forth believable, and Moore is perfect as Abraham offering up the calmest creepy vibe I've enjoyed in a while. Nerud was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed some elements of her character and then others I didn't. She has a freshly broken jaw but can communicate very well; it seemed unauthentic, especially when she was given a text-to-speech device early and seldom uses it.

Horror icon Bill Moseley played Father Dunn in Christine's flashbacks and, as always, is worth the price of admission. Moseley's not in the film much, but his scenes are cool and creepy.

"Sin Eater" consumed itself with uneven acting and a predictable storyline that offers much hope but ultimately commits the ultimate sin for a film – being uninteresting.