Sator (2020 | USA | 86 minutes | Jordan Graham)

Mark Twain offered one of the most cogent pieces of advice on creating art when he stated, “Write what you know.” And filmmaker Jordan Graham unquestionably drew from personal experience when crafting his sophomore feature Sator (premiering on VOD and streaming platforms February 9). 

One of Graham’s most fertile sources in crafting this languid, unapologetically ambiguous, very atmospheric indie film was his real-life grandmother, June Peterson, who passed away in 2019. For decades, Peterson stated that she heard, and was led by, the voice of an entity known as Sator. Peterson’s grandmother and great-grandmother, both wracked with mental illness, spoke of similar experiences with voices that only they heard. Peterson agreed to Graham filming her, and even provided examples of automatic writings that were, according to her, transcripts of Sator’s words.

Graham respectfully weaves those experiences into a fictional, supernatural-tinged narrative. Adam (Gabriel Nicholson) leads a solitary life in the snow-blanketed forests of northern California, setting cameras in the woods to photograph the surrounding wilderness and biding the time hunting. He also periodically journeys to visit his brother Pete (Michael Daniel) and Grandma Nani (Peterson). It’s gradually revealed that the force known as Sator may not be a fabrication of Nani’s mental illness. The disappearance of Adam’s and Pete’s mother, and the death of their grandfather, likewise point to Sator’s influence.

It’s a bit of a fool’s errand to elaborate any further on Sator, partly because it offers only the faintest breadcrumbs of character development and storytelling. Graham is far more interested in gradually cultivating a pervasive sense of foreboding than in giving his audience a conventional cinematic through-line. 

Emphasis on ‘gradually.’ Sator is one very slow slow-burn of a movie, with long, dialogue-free stretches that force a viewer to pay attention to background details. And while it boasts some effective shocks, they’re couched in a much more subtle patina of deep unease defiantly bereft of clear explanations or conventional exposition.

The end result will undoubtedly frustrate and alienate a significant percentage of the mainstream horror audience. This is one very, very languidly paced movie that pretty much demands your full attention, and the lack of instant gratification will doubtless turn off some viewers.

That caveat aside, though, Sator is one deeply creepy, mesmerizing exercise in sustained dread. Graham served as his own cinematographer, and he imbues the forests that envelop Adam’s cabin and Nani’s home with quiet grandeur and all-consuming menace in equal measure. He augments the visual palette with a camera that either lazily glides or sits placidly over long shots, and the organic fluidity with which Graham explores the exterior locations lends more than a trace of folk-horror to the end result. The lushness serves as blunt but effective contrast to the grainy, shot-on-video black and white footage of Peterson’s wonderfully weathered face, as she relates stories of the spirit that’s insinuated itself into her life.

Best of all, Graham’s approach of implying nearly everything and stating nothing works brilliantly. In an era where most genre movies are exposition’ed to death, Sator’s carefully-cultivated ambiguity reinforces the truism that a really great horror movie’s efficacy can be as enriched by what it doesn’t show, as by what it does show.

Amazingly, this very low-budget but extremely accomplished movie is a literal one-man show: In addition to directing and photographing Sator, Graham wrote, co-produced, edited, and scored it. Hell, he even built the cabin in which Adam resides for most of the movie’s running time. 

That singular, handcrafted touch ensured that Sator’s post-production dragged on for some six years, but damned if all of that care isn’t abundantly evident in the end result. This is one unique and resonant indie horror movie, and I can hardly wait to see what its creator does next. 

Sator premieres on VOD and streaming platforms for purchase and rental, February 9.