Watch The Sacrament For Free

People are voting emotionally.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Already out there that stands as legitimate information. Try reading "Raven,"try viewing a quality documentary and understanding the historical context from which this "movie" came from. I'm sorry but people really died in this horrible ordeal and it clearly wasn't a film. Sometimes spending 4m on a project is just a bad idea outside giving work to actors and film crews. It's not a mystery that opening weekend seemed to bring in less than $550 USD. This effort would have been better served by the creators simply retelling the original story perhaps from a different view point. I thought it was in poor taste to put up that 167 lives were lost and that only two survived. Try over 900 with no movie stars involved. 3/10 was for how things looked at the outset. Don't pay any money for this.

The Sacrament is an obvious modern retelling of the horrible events of the Jonestown Massacre. It does a good job of including actual true elements and facts of the real People's Temple cult; this includes Father, being very much like the actual real life leader, Jim Jones. The found footage aspect is the best I've seen it from any other film, even though by this time, the concept is overused and cheap like. However, The Sacrament doesn't use the found footage to show the typical horror genre off, but more of a biographical thriller, which is why I believe this works better for this film. The Sacrament is a good film, which does suffer from some dull moments, but nonetheless it more then makes up for it at its climactic moment. It's a good watch, could be better, but one of the better so called 'horror' films that you will find in the modern era.

For those of you that are saying, "You'd be better off watching 'Jonestown: Life and Death in the People's Temple.'" I mean...you're not necessarily wrong, but saying so diminishes some of what I thought was really clever about this film: the found footage format.In Guyana (as they say multiple times in the documentary you are all so well defending), Jim Jones talked all the time over the loudspeaker and TAPED everything. I think the found footage angle on this film pays an interesting tip of the hat to that aspect of Jonestown life. The reason we know so much about what happened in the massacre is: A. The congressmen brought a film crew with him and we have footage from them and B. Jim Jones audio-taped the mass suicide. Those that survived the shooting at the airstrip took the film with them. The audiotape was discovered at the site of the massacre. (Therefore, it's not really problematic that in this film, one of the cameras was left behind). Did I feel like the FF angle felt forced at times? Of course! But I've seen it done WAY more awkwardly in other films, I just have to give this one credit. I thought the movie was inspired and paid tribute to many Jonestown victims throughout(i.e. the guy speaking out against Father in the meeting, the note slipped to the media). It's really hard to recreate something so tragic without feeling campy, especially in the horror genre and I think they did a good job. I do wish that (as in Guyana), a few of the cult members actually survived and escaped with them, I'm not terribly sure why they chose to eradicate everyone. But...in all, I enjoyed it.

I got this from my local library as I do most of the films I watch so as not to blow 15 bucks at a theater for junk like this.As others have commented, this is s rip-off of the Jonestown story, in which actor Powers Booth was so good as Jim Jones. There are also documentaries on this story that are much better than this movie as well. I got the feeling the writer thought he could slip this one past a "new generation." I vividly recall the Time Magazine cover of the over 900 bodies lying dead in that remote region of Guyana and the moment the film reached the settlement, I knew it was a re-telling of Jonestown. Even the terminology and landscape used, eg. the pavilion, the layout of the settlement etc. are Jonestown to a tee.The players, who are supposed to be reporters, are annoying from the start. To me they epitomize the smart-ass, know-it-all and feel they have a right to know-it-all blogger-types so prevalent in today's media; the ones that believe they are too smart to believe in God, for example and seem dumbfounded by anyone who doesn't share their "enlightened" view.It was interesting to see how close they might come to the actual story but like the Titanic where the main character gets chance after chance to get on a life boat but doesn't or better yet, like the kids at a slasher summer camp flick, by the end you just hope they all die for their stupidity. And like those slasher flicks, inexplicably, the main character survives. Which brings me to spoiler number 1. The Sam character was seen being macheted in the pavilion but miraculously re-appears with the Father later with blood on his shirt but apparently fit enough to run for his life at the end. How? Was he just nicked or what? And how the helicopter pilot survived his gunshot wounds to be able to lie around for hours and then still fly the chopper out (and was conveniently waiting with the rotors spinning) is beyond me.I guess it never occurred to any of the three "heroes" to just get the hell out of there and send back help when they had opportunity after opportunity.The "Father" character was well-played too and like the original on which he is based, I was always struck by how he told everyone else to take the potion but didn't himself. That would have been enough to send me running, which, by the way,a few did in real life; there were a handful of survivors.I could go on but it would basically be a narrative on the Jonestown Story so I'll let you find that out for yourself. But as a last word, this film is no good.