By John Serba
Published Oct. 16, 2026, 3:00 p.m. ET
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Sacrifice (now on Netflix) is essentially Romain Gavras’ Joe vs. the Volcano, and yes, the movie is pretty much as nutty as that comparison. The director of stunning, action-studded and unforgettable Greek drama Athena — perhaps the best film of 2022 — returns with a satire of, well, a whole bunch of stuff, with Chris Evans as a spiraling movie star and Anya Taylor-Joy as the head of a cult that’s bent on throwing celebrities into a volcano in order to stave off the end of the world. Funny? Yeah, but the more pertinent question is whether it comes together satisfactorily.
SACRIFICE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: “THE PROPHECY HAS BEGUN.” So says Joan (Taylor-Joy) as she immolates her mother alive. This prophecy is to be taken seriously, then. Got it! Moving on, to a Greek quarry, its cavernous spaces and marblesque walls a lovely backdrop for a bunch of gross, dumb celebrities to convene for a gala. Charity gala, mind you, to save the planet, thrown by a real pus-filled boil of a zillionaire, Bracken (Vincent Cassel), who’s here to tell everyone he can actually rescue Earth from climate catastrophe by mining the oceans, while he feeds them and gets them drunk and entertains them with terrible quasi-art that’s phony virtue-signaling posing as music, dance and sculpture (and features Charli XCX, in a scene-stealing cameo).
Mike Tyler (Chris Evans) is an invitee, a movie star who melted down at his last movie premiere — “the flamethrower incident,” yipes — and subsequently spent some quality time in a monastery worrying about his hair and career, both thinning. He sees the gala as the launching pad for a comeback. Just when Mike thinks Bracken’s wife, Gloria (Salma Hayek) might be willing to give him a job, Joan and her heavily armed squadron of disconcertingly blonde, inbred-looking (read: creepy eyes, bad haircuts, weird matching outfits) terrorists arrive to hack off a limb to show that they’re serious about choosing three people to march up to the nearby erupting volcano and toss themselves in. Here’s your opportunity to save the world, celebs! Step right up!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Triangle of Sadness meets Werner Herzog’s Into the Inferno, and the Taylor-Joy component tosses The Menu into the mix, too.
Performance Worth Watching: Evans is terrifically on-point comedically in a choice moment when Mike walks into the middle of the terrorist-hostage situation, and believes he’s been “cast” as a “hero” in an interactive live performance.
Our Take: Sacrifice is a visually striking lark featuring a gaggle of game performances that can’t quite transcend Gavras and co-screenwriter Will Arbery’s (Succession) shallow, anarchic thematics. The film wrestles with dichotomies: truth and artifice, phoniness and sincerity, submission and domination, natural evolution and human progress. And it all spews forth chaotically like ash, smoke, and lava from a hole in the ground, while Evans — playing the star of action movies, a meta-layer for Captain America Himself — and Hayek draw earnest laughs, Cassel glowers and hisses (“I can’t believe I’m going to die next to a Golden Globe loser”), and Taylor-Joy lasers the scenery with her trademark intensity.
And here I realize I may be hard-selling the film more than it deserves. Gavras tends to potshot big targets — amusing, if too easy — and frame his cast within gorgeous, thoughtful cinematography that greatly belies the movie’s status as Netflix content (notably, it’s not an original for the streamer, which bought distribution rights at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival). He also struggles to establish his characters as anything more than archetypes during a second act that drags John Malkovich into the melee, and attempts to sell us on an emotional connection between Mike and Joan. That just further muddles a movie that Gavras can’t convince us to take seriously even as jokey satire — he just tosses it over his shoulder like a dud grenade that leaves a chipmunk hole instead of a crater.
Our Call: There might be just enough comedy and eye candy going for Sacrifice to warrant a watch. So STREAM IT, but approach with caution.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.