Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sator’ on VOD, an Atmospheric Horror Story Based on a Real-Life Grandmother’s Alleged Demonic Possession

Now available on VOD services, seeping creeper Sator is the passion project of Jordan Graham, who wears no less than 17 hats here, from writer and director to set builder and makeup artist. It makes sense, since the movie is based on the strange ramblings of his grandmother, June Peterson, who claimed to channel a spirit — demon? — named Sator, who compelled her to unconsciously scrawl reams of words and pictures on paper. She even plays herself in the film, which blends truth and fiction in a profoundly unsettling manner. So is it another BOATS (Based On A True Story) movie? Yes, sort of, in maybe a way you’ve never quite seen before.

SATOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Black and white footage: An old woman’s hands scribble sentence after sentence after sentence. Her eyes are blank. A house full of lit candles. Mutters and whispers. What are they saying? You probably don’t want to know. A bonfire. A woman appears to levitate over it. Now, color: Adam (Gabriel Nicholson) lives alone in an arcadian cabin deep in the forest. He has a gun, a dog, maybe a little bit of electricity, and a “deer cam” that might also be a demon cam, we’re not quite sure yet. He walks in the woods and blows a dog whistle, but it might also be a demon whistle, we’re not quite sure about that yet, either. He sits in the cabin accompanied only by some staring taxidermy animals, listening to old cassettes of a woman’s crazy rantings about Sator. That’s his mother — the voice, not Sator. We hear words like “cleanse” and “purify” and “burnt offering.” This is the type of life that seems like a great way to work on yourself, find yourself and/or freak yourself right the eff out.

Adam has a brother, Pete (Michael Daniel), who stops by for a sniff of moonshine and to barely say anything. Nobody’s much for speaking many words around here, and when they do, they’re murmured and mumbled so we have to lean in real close to decipher them. They visit their grandmother, Nani (Peterson), whose mind seems to have seen better days. She doesn’t even recognize Pete. She speaks of an entity named Sator like he’s a family friend who drops by for coffee now and again, and is on the Christmas card list. Sator would enter Nani’s brain and make her do lots and lots of “automatic writing.” She calls him her “guardian.” He seems like the type of old god who demands blood sacrifice and could really use a hug. He also has something to do with the disappearance of Pete and Adam’s mother. Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she’s the levitating woman. I bet she’s the levitating woman. Where she’s levitated off to, god or Cthulhu or Ninnghizhidda or Sator only knows.

There are two other women in this story, Evie (Rachel Johnson) and Deborah (Aurora Lowe), one of whom is Pete and Adam’s sister, or maybe they’re all siblings, I’m not sure it’s ever made clear. But we keep seeing the old B/W home-movie footage of Nani or the mother in some state of agitation or psychological unrest in between scenes of Adam Hearing Shit in the forest, and then some right there in the cabin. He shines his flashlight around and finds nothing but an invisible presence, maybe some evidence of something having been there, or maybe it was just a puma or bigfoot. Then his dog runs off never to be seen again. You or I — we’d have been out of there long ago, headed for the nearest Motel 6, but not Adam, because maybe he wants to not just find some answers about his mother and grandmother, but also finds Sator’s magnetism compelling. And then something IS actually in his living room, and it’s wearing a deer skull and fur pelt and robe, and whether he peers at it and says, “Mom?”, I won’t say, because NO SPOILERS TODAY, MY FRIEND.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sator is The Witch meets The Blair Witch Project in the First Cow cabin. It also has the miniscule-budget auteur vision along the lines of Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha.

Performance Worth Watching: Peterson’s performance is riveting and strange — she’s clearly playing herself, but it’s hard to tell if she’s even aware that she’s in a fictionalized movie about her unusual experiences.

Memorable Dialogue: Pete engages in gross understatement: “I still think Grandpa Jim sacrificed himself. You know there was some weird shit going on there.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: We get not one, but two shots of a Northern California banana slug oozing its way across the mossy forest floor, an image that aptly reflects Sator’s pacing — all the better to let us marinate in the movie’s eerie necro-vibes, and piss off all the bloodthirsty horror-movie mavens who thought “nothing happened” during The Witch. (Note: A lot happened during The Witch. SO MUCH happened during The Witch!) Graham deploys atmosphere by the bulldozer-bucketful, army-crawling through the bare-bones plot, adding some familiar creeping-dread elements and freaky imagery to a deeply personal family story rooted in his grandmother’s apparent mental illness.

So this is an uncomfortable watch on a couple levels. Purely as a scary movie, it quite effectively induces dread during spooky-spectral scenes in a dim-lit cabin or the pitch-black woods. The film trafficks in sonic manipulation, Graham dialing back the ominous drones of many horror outings and emphasizing all the creaks and groans of the wind in the trees, hissing cassette tapes, unidentified screeching, the sound of air being forced through the dog whistle and chirping nighttime frogs, even turning a clicking laptop hard drive into a cue for goosebumps. His cinematography is gorgeous, finding the beauty and menace in the lush green forest beneath a midnight-blue sky; importantly, it’s also patient, slow-panning us into a case of the creeps instead of quick-cutting us into confusional mayhem.

Plot-wise, Sator aims for suggestive but ends up halfway between Vagueville and Mystifying City. It maintains our curiosity but isn’t particularly satisfying in a conventional or unconventional sense (although I’ll give it its final shot, which leaves us troubled and uneasy). That’s mostly OK though, because the point isn’t What Happens, but rather Check Out These Vibes. It also gives us a real-life portrait of mental illness offering another level of discomfort — is the movie a poignant look at Grandma Nani’s strange condition, or exploitation of same? Both seem to be true.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Sator is a strange outing, the work of a filmmaker skilled in a number of technical visual storytelling skills, using them to churn up some chillingly moody ambience.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Sator