The Sacrifice Game’s director carefully avoided summoning any actual demons

polygon.com:

Jenn Wexler’s holiday horror movie The Sacrifice Game is full of surprises. The story, about a group of killers hoping to enact a demonic ritual at an elite boarding school at Christmas, feels a little like a home-invasion thriller, and a little like other period-piece boarding-school horror movies, from the classic Suspiria to Simon Barrett’s Seance. (And coincidentally, a whole lot like 2023 critical darling The Holdovers.)

But the murderers are unusually nuanced, and a series of reveals over the course of the film adds unexpected tension and gore to the initial thriller-style plot. Talking to Wexler after the movie’s U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, though, one of the bigger behind-the-scenes surprises that emerged was how much scholarship went into her horror movie — and exactly how she did and didn’t choose to use it.

“Jen did a lot of demonology research to create the world,” said Heather Buckley, a producer on Sacrifice Game and Wexler’s previous horror-thriller, The Ranger. “I know she got deep into The Lesser Key of Solomon. There was some real exploration there. […] A lot of the demonology stuff for the book came from real research and real illustrations, from a lot of esoterica.”

That’s fairly common in movies that tap into satanic rites or demonic rituals: For instance, The Exorcist and its sequels are built around Pazuzu, a demonic god worshipped by ancient cultures thousands of years ago. But Wexler wanted to avoid tapping into that kind of history.

“I was looking at all those demons and their characteristics, but I didn’t want to use a real demon, because I’m scared of demons,” Wexler said. “At the same time that I’m an atheist, I’m like, I don’t want to fuck with a real demon, and then