Sator (film)

• Michael Daniel as Pete
• Rachel Johnson as Evie
• Aurora Lowe as Deborah
• Gabriel Nicholson as Adam
• June Peterson as Nani

Principal photography took place in Santa Cruz, California and the Yosemite National Park.[5] The film was in post-production for almost six years due to the solo work and budget limits of director Jordan Graham, who also built the cabin that was used in the film.[6] June Peterson, who plays Nani in the film, is Graham's grandmother, and her belief in a supernatural being called Sator which watches over her formed the basis of the film's story.[7]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 88% based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critics' consensus reads: "Supernatural horror of a refreshingly subtle vintage, Sator uses one family's fight against demonic possession to cast its own dark, stubborn spell."[8] The film has an aggregated score of 82 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 8 reviews, indicating “universal acclaim”.[9]

Leslie Felperin, writing for The Guardian, gave the film a score of 4 stars out of 5. In her review, she noted the film's similarities to other low-budget horror films such as The Blair Witch Project and The Witch, and wrote: "Mixing black and white, low-resolution footage with more colourful material creates a bricolage-like effect that keeps wrong-footing the viewer. Graham uses darkness and a very sparse score/soundscape to create a truly disturbing work that relies not so much on gore as the uncanny in its most potent form: stillness, pools of darkness and just-visible figures."[7]

Writing for Variety, Dennis Harvey said: "this cryptic occult drama may be more impressive in its striking atmospherics than in its somewhat murky storytelling", adding: "This is the classic instance of a horror film that will please discerning viewers largely for what it doesn’t do, while more mainstream genre fans will chafe at the relative lack of gore, action and explication, complaining that "nothing happens."" He concluded: "You may not come out of Graham’s film with much definite sense of just what Sator is or wants (though the eventuality of some dead people has made it clear what it can do), but you emerge with the uncommon feeling of having dreamed someone else’s somber, unsettling dream."[6]

• Sator at IMDb
• Sator at Rotten Tomatoes