PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SGA-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, The Sacrifice Game being covered here wouldn’t exist.
It’s my favorite time of year! No, not Halloween or Christmas. My other favorite time! It’s Fantasia International Film Festival time! And just like always, the fest if chock full of goodies for me.
My next interview for this year’s fest is with Jenn Wexler, (The Ranger – 2018), the writer (along with Sean Redlitz) and director of The Sacrifice Game.
It’s bad enough that boarding school students Samantha and Clara can’t go home for the holidays, but things take a deadly turn when a murderous gang arrives on their doorstep – just in time for Christmas.
The Sacrifice Game combines two of the best of the genre, Christmas horror and locked-room thrillers. I love locked-room thrillers, especially when they take place at a boarding school. Add in demons, witchcraft, a kooky dance sequence, a fantastic soundtrack, and blood and this film hits all the right notes.
To celebrate the film’s world premiere at Fantasia this year, I chatted with Jenn via Zoom about the inspiration for the film, why she wanted to be a filmmaker, what’s up next, and more!
PopHorror: I really loved The Sacrifice Game. I watched it last night and it was so much fun so I’m super excited to speak with you today.
Jenn Wexler: Yay!
PopHorror: Christmas horror is my jam, but so are locked room thrillers, especially those that take place in boarding schools, so this was like a dream come true for me. What was the inspiration and how did the project come about?
Jenn Wexler: In terms of the inspiration, I like making movies about things that I didn’t get to experience. I went to suburban New Jersey public school, and boarding schools were always very magical and romantic and mysterious to me.
PopHorror: Right?!
Jenn Wexler: I really wanted to make a movie that was set there, and if I make this movie there then I get to explore and live in the headspace of the boarding school for the time it takes to make the movie. That was part of it. And also, I like to make movies for my 13-year-old self. That’s always on my mind when I was making it. I got into horror when I was maybe 10 years old, I started watching horror movies. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my gateway drug to the horror genre. I had moved at that time. I moved schools and I didn’t have any friends when I was like 12, and so horror movies became like my friend so I’m always trying to pay back to the 13-year-old version of me that first had seen horror and how magical that experience was. I wrote the first draft of this before I wrote The Ranger, in 2013, and I realized it was too big and I needed to go slower. The Ranger was much easier to achieve because it’s just punk kids in the woods, where with this we needed a school and a snowstorm and all this stuff. I vowed that when The Ranger came out, I’m making The Sacrifice Game. So then in 2018, after The Ranger came out, I pulled the script back out and dove into it.
PopHorror: The Ranger is pretty fantastic, and I think this is a great follow up to it. I’m glad that you waited so that you could make it better and do what you wanted with it. What made you decide on Christmas, and why 1971?
Jenn Wexler: The overall concept was these teen girls stuck at their school during Christmas and there’s a lot of themes there that I wanted to explore which is not having family, not feeling comfortable with family, finding family in your friends, finding home in the people that are your friends. So the whole movie is grappling with that. The idea of loneliness was really important, each of the characters is lonely in their own way, even the gang starts off seeming like a family, seeming like a unit but then you start to discover they’re a messed up family, they have a fucked up family dynamic. That was really important to me. And then just in terms of Christmas, I’m Jewish and I didn’t get to celebrate Christmas as a kid but I wanted to celebrate Christmas, and I was really sad that I didn’t get to celebrate Christmas. I would stay up late every Christmas Eve and watch outside my window to see if Santa would land on the house across from me because I believed that he was real. Again, it’s just like I wanted to explore this thing that I didn’t get to personally experience. In terms of 1971, we just felt like – my co-writer (Sean Redlitz) and I – we love 70s horror and we felt there were thematic resonances that made sense for that time period. I read Helter Skelter when I was a teenager so that’s always haunted me and been in the back of my mind. It all kind of started to synthesize as we got deeper into the process.
PopHorror: I love that. Georgia Acken is fantastic. That dance that she does and her movements? Wow! I was like, this girl is phenomenal. How did you decide on Georgia for Clara?
Jenn Wexler: We did auditions with actors across Canada, and we met Georgia, and it was like this is the girl. Like the Mulholland Drive line, “This is the girl! This is her. This is Clara.” She was just so instinctive. This is her first feature and we were so honored that we get to introduce Georgia to the world in her first feature. She just got the character, and got the nuances, and it was really magical. And then pairing her with Madison (Baines – The Young Arsonists 2022) they became automatic friends. Actually, on set, our whole cast just became this total family – they were like singing songs in between takes and napping together. It was so lovely. And the actors that have been in more things like Mena Massoud was in Aladdin, Olivia Scott Welch is in Fear Street, they became mentors to the others. It was so sweet to watch.
PopHorror: That’s so awesome! This makes me really excited to see what she has ahead of her because if she’s this good in her first feature… I’m excited to see her do more things. The Sacrifice Game’s world premiere is tonight and it’s already been picked up by Shudder. How does that feel?
Jenn Wexler: It feels incredible. They believed in the project. They came on early. They also have The Ranger. They picked The Ranger up back after we premiered at SXSW. They already feel like a family and to get to continue working with them is just incredible. Internationally – they have all of the domestic territories – we’re also working with Red Sea Media, and they’ve just been totally supportive as well. It’s really nice just to feel the support and the love from your distributors. It relieves some stress when you’re premiering, and you know that you have distribution already.
PopHorror: Congratulations, that’s super cool.
Jenn Wexler: Thank you.
PopHorror: What made you want to be a filmmaker?
Jenn Wexler: Oh, man. I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I also specifically wanted to work in horror, since I was a teenager. And I think it goes back to that moment when I was 12, 13 and not having friends, and horror became my friend, and I just became fascinated with how these movies are made. And it’s been a lifelong process. My friend when I was 15 wanted to be a fashion designer and she asked what I wanted to be. I said, “I want to be a filmmaker.” I just knew in that moment so since then I’ve just been actively pursuing it.
PopHorror: What is up next for you?
Jenn Wexler: I’m attached to a project called Rachel, that’s been announced. It’s a paranoid sci-fi thriller. I’m really excited for that. And we’ll see. Hopefully we can move quickly into it once the strikes are over.
PopHorror: I’m excited to see what you have coming up. One last question for you today. What’s your favorite scary movie?
Jenn Wexler: My favorite of all time is The Shining. I saw it accidentally when I was seven, so it really left an imprint, and it became a favorite.
Thank you so much to Jenn for taking the time to speak with us. The Sacrifice Game is currently in its festival run and will be coming to Shudder later this year.
