Faux Documentary.
After spending the month of October discussing Ed Gein and the various cinematic adaptations of his crimes, including The Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (listen here) and House of 1000 Corpses (listen here), Jenn and I are now deep into cult territory in November.
After opening with a primer on preacher Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple last week (listen here), we’re shifting into a fictional adaptation of the real life events with Ti West‘s The Sacrament (2013).
In the film, Sam (AJ Bowen) a reporter from VICE news, brings two colleagues – Jake (Joe Swanberg) and photographer Patrick (Kentucker Audler) – to meet with his sister, Caroline (Amy Seimetz). Sam fears that Caroline has fallen in with a cult and their journey to a remote jungle encampment reveals a collection of scared people under the control of a charismatic figure, Father (Gene Jones).
Film in a faux documentary style, the film takes place over a single day as Father orders his followers to die by mass suicide, while also demanding the murder of Sam, Jake and Patrick before they can escape to alert the authorities. The real world parallels to Jonestown aren’t subtle, but it is effective.
Episode 11: The Sacrament (2013)
Our first cult text of the month is The Sacrament (2013), Ti West’s fictionalized version of the Jonestown massacre.
Discussion topics include: the use of faux documentary, the focus on the massacre and how that affects characterizations, the charisma of “Father” and Gene Jones’ portrayal, the mumblecore cast, and real life comparisons.
If you want even more Murder Made Fiction, be sure to check out the pod’s Patreon feed, where Jenn and I have 13+ hours of bonus content. For November’s Patreon, we’re talking the Menendez brothers, with a separate primer on their case, individual discussions on all nine episodes of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, as well as the new Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers (2024).