Sacrament is a 2014 film that’s supposed to be about the Jonestown Massacre. It isn’t.
0 out of 10 stars. Even for a found footage film, this is pretty awful.
This film is marketed as based on the Jim Jones Massacre, but it really isn’t. This story is completely fictional and bares no resemblance to the Jonestown Massacre.
Three young white men, all photojournalists for a famous trendy magazine decide to film a visit to a commune in Africa where one of the men’s drug addict sister has gone to live. As soon as they get there they have a really negative vibe that this place is not what it seems, but they continue anyway. The place is led by an old southern white man who has a hold on the people that makes no sense. Most of them have come from the streets (addicts, criminals, and homeless). The rest have come from the poorest parts of Mississippi. But the few people they are allowed to interview say it’s heaven on earth.
Then a little girl approaches them and doesn’t speak. Her mother comes to get her and they learn the girl’s name is Savannah. Later that night Savannah passes them a note that says PLEASE HELP US. When they follow Savannah back to a tent, there are several families there packed and ready to leave with the journalists when the helicopter returns for them. The problem is they won’t fit on the helicopter.
Savannah’s mother shows them Savannah’s neck which has been scarred from repeated beatings. She explains that whenever parents disobey they beat their children. This is how they control everyone. And that’s precisely what happens less than an hour later when the leader, the old white guy they call Father, gathers their children and feeds them arsenic. With their children dead, the parents reluctantly drink the arsenic-laced Koolaid too and within minutes they are all in excruciating pain as they slowly die, not at all the blissful, painless death Father described.
Meanwhile the journalist with the sister is killed by his sister who then sets herself on fire. Father kills one of the journalists and the one that gets free watches as the helicopter pilot is almost murdered by Father’s henchmen.
At this point, I couldn’t even watch anymore. It’s not even remotely related to what happened at Jonestown and frustrating to watch because it’s done so poorly.
0 out of 10 stars. Avoid this. Cheap ripoff. Instead watch, “Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle”, a four part 2018 documentary with actual footage and told by the survivors.
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