Live long enough and LOVELY CHEERLEADERS you’ll see your favorite tropes get subverted, then those subversions become tropes in their own right. Over the last decade, a very specific iteration of the human sacrifice trope has risen to prominence, transforming the film’s sacrifice into the savior.
Since the early days of horror, people have been sacrificing the young, pure, and innocent for their own nefarious means. Reaching back to films as old as 1933’s King Kong through to the folk horror of The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan’s Claw as well as strange genre fare like Satan’s Slave (1976), human sacrifice has long been one of horror’s most memorable tropes. And it’s easy to see why - it provides both the act of killing someone and the justification of why. Those behind the sacrifice are willing to kill others to make their own lives better or to become more powerful, which in turn is why it’s so appealing to see them fail. But rather than a morally motivated killer like in Saw or a vengeance spree like in Friday the 13th, the justification behind ritualistic sacrifice comes with a promise of personal gain or betterment.
Pitting victims against their captors and watching them come out on top is an essential wish fulfillment story. And it’s what makes the emergence of the one-time subversion turned resounding trope of "the sacrifice becoming the savior" so appealing. Teased with the terror of watching a sacrifice, audiences are instead treated to a tale of survival. Odds stacked against them, the would-be sacrifice becomes the arbiter of their own fate. No longer tied down figuratively or literally, they strike back, whether by defeating those that would hurt them at their own game or by becoming an anti-heroic monster themselves.
Darkly humorous and sharply satirical, a recent example of this trend is in 2019’s Ready or Not. And when she survives the night, sending them to their deaths, she may have won the favor of the ancient demon that was giving them their money, material wealth, and status. So it’s Grace, her Chucks, and her blood-drenched wedding dress against the nightmarish Le Domas family. They’ll do anything to keep their wealth and status, including hunting her to the death. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s satirical slasher pits Grace (Samara Weaving) against a power-mad clan of rich psychopaths. Grace is a former foster child who grew up in near abject poverty; she’s the definition of expendable to her new in-laws. After a game of chance on her wedding night deems her a victim, Grace is offered up as a sacrifice and her only option is to survive the night as her new family hunts her down.
Narratively, this story device can feel like a sibling or offspring of the cathartic and often exploitative rape revenge tale. the wealthy. oppressed, or - as in Chelsea Stardust’s hilarious and knowing Satanic Panic - worker vs. There’s more agency in watching someone fight against an injustice that might happen and stopping it rather than retroactively seeing them gain vengeance. But in the sacrifice to savior story we often see the potential sacrifice regain their power and justice before they’re physically harmed. And just like in Ready or Not, the power balances that are explored in sacrifice to savior stories often give those watching it an enjoyably radical thrill.