The Last Sin Eater is a religious film that dabbles in the weird. It is also occasionally unnecessarily preachy. As with any film this one has its problems.
The basic idea of the film is simple; the guilt ridden Cadi Forbes (Liana Liberato) is trying to come to terms with two things that happened recently in her life. One thing is that her sister died, she sees it as her fault. The other thing is the death of grandmother. The Sin Eater (played by Peter Wingfield) is used to give a Celtic equivalent of the Last Rites and give absolution of sins. Cadi tries to find the Sin Eater so that he will absolve her of her sins while she is still alive. The film revolves around the dark secret of the practice, the interloping Christian priest and how both of these affect her [Cadi’s] family and community. It is a story plagued with over-acting and sub-par writing…though it looks beautiful.
The special features come in two forms, the deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes feature. The deleted scenes are not much to worry about missing. The scenes really are not all that important nor are they all that interesting. Other movies usually have some pretty good deleted scenes but that is other movies.
The feature is fairly interesting. It goes into great detail on the inspiration of the story. It also gives a great deal of insight to the development of the film and its production. This is where the majority of value for the DVD comes.
The special features do give something to the film that increases its value. If you are not into preachy faith-based films it is something that could easily be ignored. If you are not really bothered by preachy faith-based films it will be a welcome addition to your DVD collection.