SATOR (2019)
Director: Jordan Graham
Umbrella Entertainment

The low-budget, understated SATOR does mainstream attempts at "restrained" or so-called "elevated horror" one better.

Woodman Adam (Gabriel Nicholson) lives a lonely existence deep in the woods with only his dog to keep him company. He spends his nights in constant fear of a malevolent presence that attempts to gain entrance into his cabin. The infrared deer cameras either malfunction or come up with nothing in the mornings. That it could all be just in his head is of no comfort to his older brother Pete (Michael Daniel) since their grandmother Nani (June Peterson) who is suffering from dementia is only truly lucid when she talks about "Sator" an entity that started off as a voice inside her head that tested her in various ways before becoming her protector. Through a series of interactions between Pete and his long-suffering sister Deborah (Aurora Lowe) as well as home movie footage, we learn not only that their missing mother (Wendy Taylor) was also hearing the voices, but that Adam was already mentally-fragile – and that isolating him in the woods was an attempt to get him away from their influence – and that the seeming death from natural causes of their grandfather might have been a "burnt offering" to Sator. Adam is terrorized by nightly visits from the appearances of animal-skin, deer skull-masked entities as well as unpredictable appearances by Evie (Rachel Johnson), the girlfriend of his other brother who was institutionalized after an unexplained accident.

A virtual one man show behind the camera from writer-director-composer-editor-cinematographer Jordan Graham, SATOR leaves a lot unsaid and unclear in a supernaturally-tinged portrait of a psychologically-damaged family in a similar vein to the overrated HEREDITARY with a visual style that recalls studio A24 director Robert Eggers' THE WITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE. Unlike those aforementioned films where one gets the sense that the filmmakers are simultaneously holding back detail and bludgeoning the viewer on the head with meaning and symbolism, SATOR has the feeling of pieces coming together in the making of the film and allowing the viewer the satisfaction of doing some of the work. The horrific elements are effectively understated but the evolving portrait of the psychological damage from seemingly benign on the grandmother's part, more sinister on that of the mother, and most severe on the son – along with the attempts of others to help while making it worse through a combination of ignorance and their own mental exhaustion – is more intriguing, and more disturbing when it comes to the brutal physical violence of the last few minutes of the film. The end result may not be entirely satisfying – and it may not be one of those films that really rewards with subsequent viewings – but SATOR is more than just a timewaster for the patient viewer.

Shot on RED cameras with a lot of crisp static shots of woodland detail – mixed with fuzzy home movie footage – SATOR looks reasonably good in standard definition in spite of the predominance of dark scenes, and Umbrella's progressive, anamorphic NTSC widescreen DVD with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio just gets the job done since it is one of their barebones, menu-free efforts. Although the film is currently only available stateside on streaming services – the UK DVD is also barebones – one hopes that a domestic physical media release will feature some extras about the production and the backstory. The Australian disc is mislabeled as Region 4 but it is all region. (Eric Cotenas)

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