THE SACRIFICE GAME TBC

★★★★★ OUT NOW SHUDDER

From shocking opening to twisty climax, this period horror from Jenn Wexler (2018’s The Ranger) is a class act. Christmas Eve, 1971: misfit pupils Samantha (Madison Baines) and Clara (Georgia Acken) and their teacher Rose (Chloë Levine) are stuck at boarding school over the holidays when a murderous, Manson-like cult headed by Jude (Mena Massoud) and former student Maisie (Olivia Scott Welch) breaks in. What follows riffs on familiar homeinvasion themes, but Wexler and Sean Redlitz’s excellent script conjures laughs and bursts of poignancy amid all the bloodletting.

FREAKS VS THE REICH 15

★★★★★ OUT 12 JANUARY CINEMAS

Writer/director Gabriele Mainetti nods to the Fantastic Four and Fellini with his ambitious but meandering wartime epic. It’s WW2, and clairvoyant Franz (Franz Rogowski) wants to force a quartet of superpowered circus stars to help Germany and prevent Hitler’s death. The troupe, however, have other ideas. Mainetti assembles impressive effects and strong leads, notably Aurora Giovinazzo as tormented Matilde, but his handling is otherwise loose: slow pacing dilutes the thrills, while the choppy tone lacks – say – Guillermo del Toro’s sensitive facility for historical fantasy.

SCALA!!! 18

★★★★★ OUT 5 JANUARY CINEMAS 22 JANUARY BD, BFI PLAYER

Cult cinema…

There aren’t many independent picturehouses you could convincingly build a documentary around, but London’s Scala repertory cinema is the exception. When it took up its residence in King’s Cross in 1981, after a spell in Fitzrovia, it created a halcyon haven for film buffs to get their fix of cult cinema from around the world. Film journalist Ali Catterall and his co-director Jane Giles, the former booker at the Scala, clearly come from a place of love for the venue.

Among the roster of talking heads, Pink Flamingos’ John Waters recalls taking his late star Divine to the Scala, which he memorably describes as ‘a country club for criminals and lunatics and people that were high’. Other celeb contributors include filmmakers Ben Wheatley and Mary Harron and comedian Adam Buxton, although the better stories come from those who worked there – including one usher who accidentally pulled a sleeping man’s (prosthetic) arm off after a marathon movie sesh.

While the film is good on the Scala’s place in the cultural and political landscape of 80s Britain, it’s a shame it doesn’t dig deeper into the venue’s demise, which came after Giles played Kubrick’s thenwithdrawn A Clockwork Orange and faced legal action. Yet with animation further lending a DIY feel, Scala!!! is still an entertaining guide to this grungy but fondly remembered picture palace.

THE VERDICT A good-natured, nostalgic wallow in a bygone cinematic era, ably put together by Catterall and Giles.

BLANK 15

★★★★★ OUT 8 JAN DIGITAL

Novelist Claire (Rachel Shelley) signs up for a fully AI-operated retreat in a bid to shift her writer’s block. But when a virus infiltrates her unit’s software the system glitches, leaving her locked inside with an increasingly unstable android called Rita (Heida Reed). Can Claire resolve her IT issues and escape? Brit director Natalie Kennedy’s debut plays like a mash-up of M3GAN, Misery and Black Mirror, though what might have made a tight 45-minute TV episode feels somewhat stretched at feature length. Reed and Shelley are solid throughout, however, and the last act satisfies.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE TBC

★★★★★ OUT 12 JANUARY CINEMAS

Why did feminist sex researcher and academic Shere Hite fall off the radar? The answers ring out clearly from this fascinating, thoughtful and revealing doc by Nicole Newnham. Huge in the 70s, Hite broke ground by discussing women’s sexual pleasure and publishing her rigorous research in The Hite Report. Men got so freaked, watching their butt-hurt responses here is enough to make you think Anchorman was a documentary. While it’s no surprise Hite ‘disappeared’, Newnham restores her rep to stress how vital her work was – and still is.