This gritty, atmospheric creature feature doesn’t disappoint.
As soon as the thumbnail for Sator slid onto my screen it had caught my attention. I had been craving a good monster movie, and I had high hopes that this would be the one to quell my hunger. I can now happily report that it lived up to (exceeded, even) my expectations.
This film is undoubtedly a slow burn. In fact, outside of a wonderfully nightmarish introduction and a radio broadcast (more on those in a moment), we don’t hear the first line of dialogue in this movie for over 12 minutes! It’s important to note that this is not a bad thing, as it manages to stay engaging through fantastic tension building and a number of clever narrative tools employed throughout.
The first of the tools mentioned above are the black and white, square-framed videos that we are introduced to at the very beginning. Some of these scenes are old family footage that give glimpses into the characters’ pasts, while others recount a conversation that took place that explains some of the motives of our protagonists. The one common denominator is a particular house of significance, in which all scenes seem to be black and white.
The second of these are the bone chilling radio broadcasts, the first coming immediately after the aforementioned black and white intro. These often serve as super creepy commentary for some of the movie’s most intense scenes, and they are just perfectly orchestrated to kick the tension to another level.
We get back-and-forth cuts between a formerly happy family, and the two brothers at present who are anything but. Those brothers are Adam (Gabriel Nicholson), who we first see traversing the woods, and Pete (Michael Daniel), who we get introduced to a bit later.
The brothers are living in a secluded cabin in the woods, with seemingly nothing to do to pass the time but hunting. It’s not clear exactly what they’re hunting at first, and they could seem to just be desperately hungry. But as the puzzle pieces of this movie fall into place, their excursions take on a far more ominous tone.
Sator is tense and gritty, with a masterfully-built, disturbing atmosphere throughout. I’m not even typically the biggest monster movie guy, but I was thoroughly impressed with this film, and will likely be rewatching it in the future. My only real complaint is that the big bad Sator himself was a little underwhelming in the final reveal, but the rest of the movie more than made up for that. If you’ve been craving a good creature feature and you don’t mind a slow burn, I would recommend this movie any day of the week. Even better, it’s currently free to stream on Tubi.