SACRIFICE is a horror film that doesn't want to be a horror film. Instead it would rather be a mature police procedural thriller, with lots of mystery aspects, but there's no getting away from the fact that the narrative is rooted in folk horror no matter how much the writer and director try to distance themselves from the genre.

The storyline is about an American doctor who goes to live on the Shetland islands with her husband and soon discovers a body missing a heart. It all points to sinister conspiracies and sacrifice, and she's soon up to her neck in danger. The film is beautifully shot - in Ireland for the most part - with lots of welcome outdoor location photography, and the plot feels like an episode of SILENT WITNESS with hints of THE WICKER MAN.

A shame, then, that the central detective story is so restrained and predictable. Radha Mitchell is a good actress, and she has a bit of charm here, but otherwise the it all feels very routine and difficult to get excited about. I liked seeing Ian McElhinney (GAME OF THRONES) in support but the rest of the cast are pretty boring, and things resolutely play out in the most predictable way imaginable.

Unable to conceive, Dr. Tora Hamilton (Radha Mitchell) moves from the U.S. to the Shetland Isles where she and her husband intend to adopt a child. What Tora doesn't realise is that any character in a horror movie who visits a remote Scottish island where the locals are a bit shifty is destined to fall foul of a pagan cult still practising ancient rituals.

Part The Wicker Man (obvs),part Silent Witness, this mediocre horror/thriller never surprises, from Tora's fraught with danger investigation of the corpse she unearths while burying a horse (it's okay… it's dead!),right down to the cliff-top finale that sees the main bad guy giving our heroine more than one chance to do him in (which she does). Everything plays out exactly as one would expect.

Had writer/director Peter A. Dowling pushed the envelope a bit more—taken a few more risks—this could have been a far more effective flick; as it stands, it feels a bit like a made-for-TV movie-of-the-week.

Sacrifice is the story of an American doctor who moves to Wales with her husband. Unable to have children, the couple move back to the husband's homeland, the Shetland Islands, to adopt a child. When attempting to bury a dead horse, our hero discovers a dead body on her property, leading her onto a conspiracy of sacrificial practices dating back centuries. Is this all fairy-tale stuff or can she prove the men on this island continue the tradition to this day?

As my title notes, this plot closely resembles the plot of "The Wicker Man": an outsider arrives on an island, begins to investigate mysterious happenings, and gets in trouble for their efforts. But unlike "The Wicker Man", this movie is far less enjoyable.

I guess I'll start off with the positives. The setting is beautiful. I can watch those Welsh hills forever and the cliffside footage is stunning to look at. I also enjoyed seeing Rupert Graves in something. I stopped watching "Sherlock" a while back so it was nice to see him pop up. He's... okay in his role. I did enjoy the scene where he bashes that guy's head in with a rock, absolutely brutal!

The rest of this though isn't great. The dialogue is extremely clunky; the screenwriters had no idea how to write good exposition. It all feels very forced and rushed. The average movie-goer can see this plot twist coming from a mile away. Within 20 minutes I knew what the remainder of the movie was going to be. The lighting, especially during the climax was horrendous. I couldn't even tell what was going on.

And then just a lot of this plot didn't make sense to me. Why move your wife back to Scotland if you know she's in danger of being murdered by your father and his weird cult? Why would that lawyer use his real name when dealing with that family to take their sister and have her pretend to be his wife? Why did that fake computer tell the doctor in the beginning that the baby was positive for cocaine? We never even acknowledge this. There's a lot more that I have problems with but I've wasted enough time on this.

I wouldn't recommend this movie. It's not good but it's not bad enough to be enjoyable to watch either. The pacing is slow and there's really nothing noteworthy to see here.