Customer Ratings & Reviews

The 1978 mass suicide and murders at the Peoples Temple in Guyana shocked the world. 909 followers of Jim Jones died in Jonestown in the wake of the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan and his party at a nearby airstrip. The mass suicide by way of cyanide laced punch spawned the term “drinking the Kool Aid." There have been several films about the events. Sarah Logan survived those events, but now, ten years later, she’s still suffering the mental aftereffects. Her therapist Dr. Adelman (which sounds like a nod to Dr. Edelmann from the classic 1940's Universal horror film "House of Dracula") can’t seem to help her. She thinks a return to the scene of the deaths, which included her parents, might help, but will it? Once there she finds that while people may die, evil never does. Not even of boredom after watching a bland photoplay like this. Calling The Jonestown Haunting a horror film is stretching things. For almost the whole film we see Sarah reminiscing about her time at Jonestown. Or wandering around the area ten years later and having more memories. We get to hear Jim Jones (William Meredith) preach and see some of the investigation by Congressman Ryan (Kevin Stamp). Then with about fifteen minutes left The Jonestown Haunting goes off into half-baked absurdity. Then, about thirty seconds of supernatural activity. And that’s a positive affirmation, nothing remotely scary. What The Jonestown Haunting actually is, is a drama about survivor’s guilt and recovering from tragedy. A few moments of mystical / supernatural activity got added in. Then they made a scary cover with all those skulls (!) and called it a horror movie. But don’t be fooled into thinking it's going to be absolutely fantastic, cuz you'll be disappointed. A bar above the usual dvd releases from bargain-basement-grade company '4 Digital Media', whose movies are generally absolute garbage, this one is at least watchable.