Savage Messiah

An excellent, thought provoking film. Well acted throughout, disturbing at times, you feel for the characters. The theme of spousal/partner abuse is primary here, and I do not believe I have ever seen a better description of the "battered spouse" syndrome on film.

While this movie obviously didn't have a 50 million dollar budget, the results do not suffer. Brilliant and highly recommended.

There is no words that can adequately define the impact that this movie will have, its the sort of movie that you watch once but will stick with you forever simply due to the fact that such a horror movie could not be imagined if it was not True !!.

This is such a powerful yet darkly disturbing movie that my advice is don't watch it alone or if you are easily upset.

Marvelous performances by Polly Walker as the emotionally invested social worker will have you Loving her, and Luc Picard as the what can only be described as a Perverted and deeply destructive Cult leader. Make this a very rarely seen master piece that deserves to be watched just to applaud the womens strength in facing there Demon.

I hope you get as much from this film as i did, but i wont say enjoy it because you truly shouldn't enjoy this story.

Roly

I happen to know that this film was shot in about 18 days and was extremely low budget. This makes you appreciate even greater the talent of the director who obviously had very few tools to play around with, except for the actors. This is a powerfull film which has been powerfully directed. My marks are 8+ out of 10 and the only reason why I do not give it full marks is because it deserved some more money to be put on screen, and then it would have been so much greater I'm sure.

The film is an attempt to cross a dark psychological thriller with a profound character study - the result: a film that feels like a stew that has been thrown together and the ingredients don't seem to fit together. The main character is believable and also shows moments of real intensity, but everything else seems to have gotten out of hand like an amateur theater group. The supporting actors deliver an affected acting that invites laughter more than thought. The plot is thus somewhere between exaggerated pathos and clumsy drama. There are unintentionally funny dialogues and the film just doesn't really want to captivate. There is no tension for a thriller about a strange cult and these characters are too weakly cast for an autobiographical character study.

This excellent drama is one of the best films about a cult that I have seen since the early eighties (SPLIT IMAGE and TICKET TO HEAVEN spring to mind from that era). The supporting performance by Quebecois actress Isabelle Blais is Oscar-worthy. Her portrayal of a brainwashed woman who finally sees the light is the film's most memorable aspect, but all of the performances are top notch.