Sacrifice

"Sacrifice" is Romain Gavras's follow-up to "Athena," his frantic 2022 banlieue riot movie, now relocated to a Greek island and a Netflix budget. Chris Evans plays Mike Tyler, a faded action star trotted out at some glossy climate benefit. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Joan, the glassy-eyed figurehead of an eco-cult that storms the party. Their theory: a nearby volcano is about to blow, the planet is cooked, and the gods will only be appeased by the ritual sacrifice of famous people. Mike, who has not been truly famous in a while, gets grabbed anyway. The first act is the kidnap and the realization he's been scheduled for an offering. That's the setup. Everything after is the hike up the mountain.

Evans is actually doing something here. He plays Mike as a vain, flop-sweating guy who still thinks he can charm his way out of a knife, and the self-satire lands — he's trading on his own leading-man face and letting it curdle. He's the one performer who treats the premise like comedy instead of a thesis. Gavras can shoot. The island looks beautiful, the compositions as the group climbs toward the caldera have real scale, and when the camera moves it moves with purpose. If you liked the kinetic long takes in "Athena," there are flashes of that muscle here. Vincent Cassel shows up and makes a meal of a small role.

The script wants to skewer celebrity activism, doomsday grifters, and the people who fund both, but it keeps flinching. Jokes get set up and then shrugged off. Taylor-Joy's cult leader is written as a vibe rather than a person, so there's nothing to push against; she floats, Evans flails, and the movie never figures out whose film it is. The pacing sags in the middle hour. For a satire about end-times hysteria, it's weirdly tasteful. You can feel the notes meetings in every scene that almost says something and then doesn't.

If you want a Netflix throw-on with pretty Mediterranean light, Chris Evans doing a bit, and a plot you can mostly follow while folding laundry, you'll be fine. Think "Glass Onion" without the hooks, or "Triangle of Sadness" with the bile drained out. The viewer who taps out at the forty-minute mark is anyone who came for a sharp class satire, anyone who wants cult-movie weirdness in the "Midsommar" register, or anyone who liked "Athena" and expected Gavras in attack mode.

SLOP because the ambition and the execution are in different time zones. The movie wants to be an "eat the rich" provocation and a cult thriller and a Chris Evans comeback showcase, and it keeps softening each one so the others can breathe. The messaging is the clearest tell. The script hands characters tidy little speeches about billionaires, climate collapse, and celebrity rot, then stages no scene that puts those ideas under pressure. Nobody argues; nobody loses an argument. That's a sermon problem, not a politics problem. A sharper film would've let the cult be scary, the actor be pathetic, and the thesis emerge from the collision. This one asks you to nod along instead. Pretty, slow, pre-chewed.