The Offering (2023 film)

Arthur and his pregnant wife come to Brooklyn to his father, who runs a Jewish funeral house in a Hasidic community, and the father is very happy to establish relations with his son after many years of separation. Arthur has some financial troubles and does not know how to ask his father to mortgage a house for him. However, soon these problems fade away for Arthur. A suicide body is brought to the morgue, and Arthur accidentally breaks a mysterious amulet, thereby releasing something sinister, the ancient demon that attacks families struggling with unresolved traumas and steals children. Meanwhile, Arthur's wife is expecting their first child. In order to save their baby, they have to resort to the help of a mysterious community that has been fighting a powerful evil for a long time.

• Nick Blood as Arthur
• Emily Wiseman as Claire
• Allan Corduner as Saul
• Paul Kaye as Heimish
• Daniel Ben Zenou as Chayim
• Jodie Jacobs as Chana
• Sofia Weldon as Sarah Scheindal
• Anton Trendafilov as Yosille
• Velizar Binev as Moishe
• Meglena Karalambova as Aida
• Jonathan Yunger as Levi Siegelman [3]

In June 2020, Oliver Park was reported to be directing the film in his feature directorial debut.[4] Under the working title Abyzou,[5] filming began on January 25, 2021, at Nu Boyana Film Studios, in the midst the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria.[6] Safety measures the production crew followed included mask wearing and regular COVID tests and temperature checks.[7]

The film was released by Decal on January 13, 2023.[3]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 42 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "Within the outline of it's fairly standard story, The Offering puts a unique--and often genuinely scary--spin on demonic possession horror tropes".[8] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 60 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[9]

In a review for Variety, Dennis Harvey described The Offering as "a lively but cluttered pileup of jump scares with too few original ideas". Comparing it to 2019's The Vigil, Harvey referred to the film as the "showier affair of the two" and points out that it lacks The Vigil's "atmospheric dread and psychological plausibility, resulting in a jump-scare-riddled contraption ultimately more cheesy than frightening." He praised the production design and camerawork, and stated that most of the actors "do decent work". He criticized The Offering's "short-attention-spanned, obvious overall approach, which sacrifices credibility for increasingly cluttered, ineffectual shocks" and concludes his review by stating that The Offering is at no risk of being boring, but is "just too much".[3]

Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, referring to it as a "surprisingly strong genre alternative". He noted that the "performances are a mixed bag", with the older actors seeming to "understand the assignment" better than their younger counterparts. Tallerico also criticized the brightness level on certain scenes, describing the film as "often too well-lit".[10]

Christian Zilko of IndieWire gave the film a grade of A− and praised its craftsmanship and production design. He wrote: "There's no shortage of great movies about exorcising demons from people's bodies, but this might be the best film about trying to keep one in".[11] Marco Vito Oddo of Collider gave the film a B, stating that  "The Offering won’t get any points for originality, but people looking for well-crafted horror can’t go wrong with Park’s latest film". He pointed out that The Offering was "too reliant on jumpscares" but went on to praise Allan Corduner and Paul Kaye's performances and noted that despite its lack of originality, it still delivered "good-old fashion horror fun".[12]

• The Offering at IMDb