Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Sacrifice is the story of an American doctor who moves to Wales with her husband. Unable to have children, the couple move back to the husband's homeland, the Shetland Islands, to adopt a child. When attempting to bury a dead horse, our hero discovers a dead body on her property, leading her onto a conspiracy of sacrificial practices dating back centuries. Is this all fairy-tale stuff or can she prove the men on this island continue the tradition to this day?As my title notes, this plot closely resembles the plot of "The Wicker Man": an outsider arrives on an island, begins to investigate mysterious happenings, and gets in trouble for their efforts. But unlike "The Wicker Man", this movie is far less enjoyable.I guess I'll start off with the positives. The setting is beautiful. I can watch those Welsh hills forever and the cliffside footage is stunning to look at. I also enjoyed seeing Rupert Graves in something. I stopped watching "Sherlock" a while back so it was nice to see him pop up. He's... okay in his role. I did enjoy the scene where he bashes that guy's head in with a rock, absolutely brutal!The rest of this though isn't great. The dialogue is extremely clunky; the screenwriters had no idea how to write good exposition. It all feels very forced and rushed. The average movie-goer can see this plot twist coming from a mile away. Within 20 minutes I knew what the remainder of the movie was going to be. The lighting, especially during the climax was horrendous. I couldn't even tell what was going on.And then just a lot of this plot didn't make sense to me. Why move your wife back to Scotland if you know she's in danger of being murdered by your father and his weird cult? Why would that lawyer use his real name when dealing with that family to take their sister and have her pretend to be his wife? Why did that fake computer tell the doctor in the beginning that the baby was positive for cocaine? We never even acknowledge this. There's a lot more that I have problems with but I've wasted enough time on this.I wouldn't recommend this movie. It's not good but it's not bad enough to be enjoyable to watch either. The pacing is slow and there's really nothing noteworthy to see here.

Beautifully shot, a great film to watch on a dark and stormy day at home all cuddled up. It's never super slow either, though from the beginning I prepared myself for some longer more slower parts but that definitely didn't happen. I love this lead actress! I truly believe she is intelligent and a Doctor whereas many actresses who play Doctors do not convince me and then I find myself distracted and unable to focus on the story. I could guess what was going on but I still wanted to keep watching because I was connected to the main characters. Satisfying ending with this film. It is worth the rental for sure. Afterward I felt like I'd been in Scotland/Ireland all weekend.

This is just about as bad as could be for a film with such fine actors. But Rupert Graves has shown us how tough times can be in his profession. The star of such great films as Maurice and a Handful of Dust has finally descended into formulaic feminist pulp in order to pay the taxman and we are left with 91 minutes of entirely predictable stomach shriveling drivel.An American doctor is childless and married to the heir of a Scottish estate. The Laird, hardly older than his son in appearance, is the wealthy benefactor of a State of the Art maternity hospital built on a remote Western Isle where he has his castle. He has kindly helped his son to adopt a child from this facility in order to progress the line. And then a dead body with a slashed open rib cage and ancient Runic brand marks appears in the garden - and the rest is depressingly obvious.The entire cult involved here is naturally made of evil men and all the heroes are wonderfully motherly women with the exception of fading heart throb Rupert who is scripted to be a great husband and potential father - unless one dwells upon the notion that he must have known and supported everything going on in the past - and is therefore just as guilty as the rest of them.This film is simply a waste of time and space. Put it in the recycle bin where it belongs.

Composer Benedikt Brydern's minimalist score opening at the start of SACRIFICE is a savagely witty tip off about what to expect from Director Peter A. Dowling's movie. It has a relentless pounding riff that never stops until the credits end for this action-adventure-mystery with what may appear to be familiar horror movie overtones that may distract audiences a little but the savage violence – without gratuitous gore, mind you – and many scenes of sinister happenings will make them focus as the story unfolds.Here is another tip off about what to expect. In her more than 62 screen credits, according to the Internet Movie Database, Radha Mitchell's portfolio includes some of the best upscale A, B horror and sci-fi movies that required her to fight off flesh-eating aliens, zombies and even a monster crocodile, just to name a few. Here is one more tip off: This is a bloody great, edge-of-your-seat movie with very imaginative plot stratagems and themes, such as this one: The maternal instinct is a force of nature. What's this? I thought when Bydern's score kicked in early in the beginning. Odd, for that kind of dramatic music for a movie about a doctor, Tora Hamilton (Radha Mitchell) moving with her husband (Rupert Graves), to the Shetland Islands, 100 miles off the coast of Scotland. They're having baby-making problems and they're hoping to resolve them in their new land where Rupert was born.In the course of her new job as a pediatrician, she becomes involved in the mystery surrounding the body of a young woman with strange symbols carved into her flesh and her heart ripped out. Whoa! The body is found on the property of her and her husband. (Yes, Brydern's music is pounding on.) Some critics might snipe about the very subtle, and I mean very subtle, hints at movies like ROSEMARY'S BABY and The STEPFORD WIVES but trust me SACRIFICE will keep folks on the edges of their seats.