Reviews
[Review] ‘Sagebrush’ Takes a Haunting Look at the Aftermath of a Religious Cult
Cults, real or fictionalized, can make for a fascinating storytelling device. There’s the usually enigmatic leader, so assured of their special set of beliefs. Are they steely-focused on achieving a spiritual goal? Or is there a more sinister end product to their new religion? Then there are the personal tales of those who choose to follow. Are they just poor souls who lacked guidance and now have something meaningful? Or are they foolishly walking themselves straight into a slaughterhouse? Redact Games’ Sagebrush poses such questions and brings some intriguing answers.
While most video games involving cults tend to put you right in the mix and usually has you fight them (Far Cry 5, Resident Evil 4 etc) at the height of their powers, Sagebrush takes place in a cult compound after the demise of its flock. It’s a ghost story of sorts, if not in the traditional sense, and offers an interesting take on the cult of…well, cults.
You’re investigating the Black Sage Ranch, former home of the Perfect Heaven Millenial cult. Your job is to search this New Mexico desert ranch for clues about the lives of those in the cult before they took their lives in a mass-suicide years before.
This is a short narrative-driven adventure. There are some spoken parts where a follower recollects their memories of the people at the compound via tape recordings, but generally, Sagebrush is about reading the rooms and the notes, timetables, and reminders dotted about the compound. It’s not building to some great reveal or crazy twist, it’s just telling the diverse stories of why people chose to join a cult and ultimately sacrifice their lives for the cause.
You get to roam the entire compound as you investigate. You need to find keys and relevant information to access certain parts of it though, and that flows naturally through your discoveries for the most part. There is a map if you get lost, but on occasion, you’re likely to get lost trying to figure something out. The pace is fairly serene despite being a sub-2 hour game, but an obstacle to progress can make Sagebrush feel like a slog. Thankfully it’s a rare occurrence.
Sagebrush is presented in a low-fi, low-resolution, low-poly manner that is married to some modern conveniences. The low-fi visuals certainly don’t prevent Sagebrush from creating an effective atmosphere. It’s used in such a way that it perfectly replicates the hazy open quiet of an abandoned desert ranch. There’s just the right amount of detail to convey what the game wants you to see and it’s truly a credit to the developer’s vision that they got this balance right. The package is wrapped up nicely by the inclusion of a haunting ambient soundtrack that lilts away in the background, and good use of sound effects, be it creaking floorboards, squeaky doors, or the ambiance of the New Mexico wilds.
So Sagebrush certainly looks and sounds the part, but that’s only a relatively small part. Sagebrush is about storytelling first and foremost and it needs to succeed at that more than anything. Largely, Sagebrush does indeed spin a fascinating yarn. It’s mostly via the audio recordings that you get the meat of it, as the ranch itself is a tad sparse in terms of opportunities to help tell the story via the scenery, at least for the first half of the game anyway. Locations, while well realized, hold a loose connection with the letters and audio you pore over. They rarely feel like they give you enough visual insight beyond their emptiness.
Luckily the story told via words and sound is interesting and informative enough to make up for it. These tales of cult members and the reasons behind their choice to join Perfect Heaven are not all infatuation and brainwashing. People have a variety of reasons for joining, often they’re searching for meaning in their lives after a major setback, some are just disillusioned with religion and Perfect Heaven’s whole schtick of unpacking the lies of regular religion makes it an appealing alternative.
Not everyone is entirely happy or committed to the cause though. Throughout the game, you come across instances of rebellion and doubt, which is made all the more tragic when you consider these people still ultimately died for the cult despite this.
Sagebrush aims to look at the humanity behind the subject matter, and while it doesn’t always work as well as it could, it does reach dark and revelatory heights from an unexpected angle. Its slow pace should be its greatest strength, but there needed to be a touch more environmental storytelling to make the most of the wandering you do.
Review code provided by the publisher
Sagebrush is available on Steam now
It’s a day of the month ending in Y, and that means it’s time for another killer shark film. Why? Because they’re inexpensive to make, play into an easy fear, and keep finding audiences willing to give them a spin. The Bay is the latest entry in the shark attack subgenre, and while it’s noticeably better than last month’s Chum, it still struggles to barely stay afloat.
Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.
The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”
It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.
Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.
To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!
His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.
Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.
There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.
Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?
“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.
The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.
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