Watch The Veil For Free

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This movie is beyond stupid. I made it through 15 minutes, couldn't take any more.

In the intro me meet some cult and how its leader Jim Jacobs leads all the disciples to commit suicide just as the FBI arrives. The group tapes all this. One little girl survives. Now, years later, the girl is an adult and a reporter asks her to help on a project about this commune called Heaven's Veil. The reporter, Maggie, wants to take Sarah, back to the scene of the crime. So off they go with a huge TV crew of indistinct characters. And it's not long before they start bickering. But Maggie isn't some disinterested reporter. Her father was the lead FBI agent on the camp's raid.Once they get there, Sarah has all sorts of flashbacks and as expected there is no cell phone signal. Sarah takes them past the camp to a remote cabin which was Jim's retreat. There they find cameras and tapes and Maggie wants to see them all.They discover that Jim wasn't some power-crazed fool. This guy was something else. At some point the daughter of one his disciples was ill and hospitalized and the doctors offered no hope. He goes into a trance, touches the girl, and she recovers. At another occasion, he takes some medications to again reach trance and takes over a disciple's body momentarily. The third step is to take some cocktail of meds to nearly kill himself and receive an antidote right before his body dies. And with that successful experience he concludes that he can free the soul momentarily from the body to reach the next level. He wants all his disciples to experience this enlightenment. With that, the FBI raid takes on a different meaning altogether.But by then our TV crew starts seeing and hearing things. They become possessed and start killing each other. It gets dark and things become unclear. Sarah who was raised by the entire commune learns who her parents are, and that also changes things.The Veil has an excellent story, no doubt, based on the Jonestown massacre. It presents a fantastic fantasy alternative history if you will, of the events. What if Jim Jacobs was right? Of course here with the twist, it turns out he isn't entirely the villain. That part of The Veil is very compelling. It's the present with the obnoxious crew that's not particularly strong. Ghost stories are hard to pull off. Then there's the obligatory convention that days last minutes and nights last forever and it's dark and you can't see much of what's going on. The cult part of the movie shows that a horror story can be much creepier if told in daylight. What doesn't help either is that in the present, sound and effects are overwhelming, loud, and constant. Fortunately, it's not orchestrated music but digital, still, it's too much and gets distracting.I wasn't expecting much from The Veil but was gladly surprised to find such a developed and smart script. This isn't your mediocre standard pointless horror. It also benefits from a standout performance by Thomas Jane.

Overall was a very strong recent horror film, especially when compared to recent "failures" such as; Unfriended, Occulus, Ouijia, and Devil's Due (plus plenty more).This movie isn't perfect by any means, but for the standards of horror and being an enjoyable movie, yes it was very good. Some of the events where a little too predictable, but I didn't find those parts too ruining for the overall film. The supernatural aspect was definitely interesting in this one, especially when pairing it with a suicide cult (oh and no it's not ripping off the suicide cult from V/H/S 2 BTW, it's very different from that one so have no fear in thinking that this film might be ripping off other horror films. Trust me, it's not.).Is it scary? Kind of. Probably not nightmare inducing for me, but I think the scariest aspect is revolving around the cult and how the followers blindly follow the leader much like cults in real life. Is it re watchable? I would say so in all honesty. Is it amazing? Ehhh, not amazing but very good and deserves the rating of 7/10 from me. Does it end well? Yes and no. Some of the actions of a certain character irked me towards the end and I found myself very disappointing in this character. However I will say the ending wasn't bad really by any means, especially when playing off a certain part of the beginning of the film. Also another good part of the closing of this film is the very last line said. For some reason the very subtle, nonchalant line at the very end really got to me, and I am sure once you watch it you'll understand why.

I was a little surprised to see another movie based on the Jim Jones massacre after watching The Sacrament recently. This movie takes a strangely supernatural approach to the subject matter, which could be a decent idea. However, the movie gradually falls apart the longer it goes on.The first misstep is the photography. I've seen this trend toward using washed out colors in horror movies, and every time I see it, I hate it a little more. I want to see what happens. I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out what I'm looking at. The approach comes across like a muddy black-and-white picture with very low contrast. Mix this with mostly dark interiors and exteriors, a bit of shaky-cam, and I have no clue why I'm still watching.Then the story gets going. A documentary crew arrives at the compound where a cult committed mass suicide during the 80s. The crew has a guest - the one survivor of that mass suicide, who doesn't remember anything. Until, of course, she does.A bunch of stuff happens, involving people moving around inside and outside a house. Ghosts are involved, and some sort of possession. All of this is a dull slog, since it's hard to care about it if you can't understand what you're watching. Mostly interchangeable characters also make this hard to follow.The one saving grace that the movie has is the flashback scenes, which we get to watch in the form of videos that the crew watches. There are a few questions I have about this. Why are they using a projector when there are VHS tapes? When we go into watching one of these movies, how are these nicely edited with multiple camera angles? This is supposed to be a found-footage portion of the story, but it's actually better than the rest of the movie. At least, it seems that way because it's got better lighting than the rest of it.The twist to the story is that the cult was actually right. They had found some path to immortality of the soul (or something like that). They were in the process of going through the last step when the police arrived and interrupted it, ensuring that everyone would die.Why did the police arrive then?The logistical and plot problems of the story aren't the biggest offense. What bothered me the most was how the story effectively tries to give credibility to Jim Jones. It sucks all of the horror out of these charismatic leaders that persuade (and force) people to do their bidding, and exchanges that for a cartoonish ghost villain.In summary, this movie took a premise that was legitimately scary, then tried to justify the real horrors, then turned the source of that horror into a misunderstood ghost.Nothing scary in it. Mostly boring, but also sort of puzzling. I have the feeling that the twist was so central in the writer's mind that he never considered if it was a good idea or not.