Four Netflix dark comedies to watch if you loved ‘Sacrifice’
The funniest thing about Sacrifice is that nobody thinks they’re the villain, which is some achievement when you’ve got celebrities congratulating themselves for saving the planet while Anya Taylor-Joy’s cult leader reckons chucking people into a volcano counts as doing humanity a favour. Woman, please!
Chris Evans has gone from saving the world in a superhero suit to playing a washed-up action star in Sacrifice who can’t even keep himself out of trouble. This time, he’s stuck with a bunch of nutters who think they’ve got the fate of humanity in their hands.
And that’s what makes the whole thing such a laugh. You’ve got this bunch of muppets banging on about doing the right thing when half of them wouldn’t know right from wrong if it smacked them in the face.
And if you had a laugh watching that lot make fools of themselves, well, there’s more where that came from. Here are four Netflix dark comedies you should play next.
Four Netflix dark comedies to watch if you loved Sacrifice
Ready or Not (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2019)
Cinema has told us that most times, marrying into money means you are marrying into something weird, but Ready or Not takes it up a notch and takes us into a family that considers hunting the bride a fun wedding-night activity. Poor Grace (Samara Weaving) has barely had time to enjoy her new surname when the Le Domas clan ropes her into hide-and-seek at their enormous mansion, only she doesn’t realise the game involves her in-laws trying to kill her before dawn.
And if the self-important crowd in Sacrifice made you want to see rich people brought down a peg, wait until you meet the Le Domas, because their belief in a murderous family tradition is every bit as absurd as their utter confidence that it’ll go to plan. Grace, meanwhile, is having none of it, and watching her fight back in a ruined wedding dress is an absolute treat. Some honeymoon!
Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)
The cult leader in Sacrifice reckons a few deaths will save the world, which sounds crazy until you meet Leonard (Dave Bautista), a stranger who turns up at a family’s holiday cabin with much the same proposition. He’s brought three other people along, and they are insisting that Eric and Andrew must choose to sacrifice someone they love or watch the apocalypse happen.
Mind you, Knock at the Cabin isn’t having the same laugh as Sacrifice, and anyone expecting jokes between the threats is in for a shock, because M. Night Shyamalan plays the predicament with a straight face. What connects them is the cockiness of people who think they are saving humanity, even while they terrorise someone else.
It’s What’s Inside (Greg Jardin, 2024)
You know that one person who brings something bizarre to a party and then manages to talk everyone into trying it? That’s Forbes in It’s What’s Inside, turning up at a pre-wedding reunion with a machine that lets people swap bodies. Intrigued very much by it, this group of college friends decide to play along, and before long nobody’s sure who is inhabiting whose body, never mind who can be trusted.
Unlike the hostage chaos in Sacrifice, nobody needs to storm the party here, because these people manage to manufacture their own disaster out of old grudges and the jealousy they have been pretending doesn’t exist for years. The real fun is watching people act as though they have got everything under control when, as viewers, you can see the whole thing coming apart.
Apostle (Gareth Evans 2018)
If there’s a list of “men who need to be off the internet”, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) from Apostle is top of the list, because he has got it into his head that Michelle (Emma Stone), the boss of a pharmaceutical company, is an alien sent to ruin humanity. And what does the genius do with this information? He gets his cousin to help kidnap her, then expects Michelle to sit in a basement and confess to being from another planet. Brother, she has got a company to run, and now she’s having to argue with a guy who reckons he’s Earth’s last hope.
Now this is something Sacrifice fans will recognise, because Teddy’s cut from the same cloth as Anya Taylor-Joy’s self-appointed saviour, convinced that doing something monstrous is fine as long as he calls it a good deed. The difference is Bugonia doesn’t make a joke of it.