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Poster for Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

2006 · 1h 26m · N/A Documentary, History, TV Movie
Directed by Stanley Nelson

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Overview

Featuring never-before-seen footage, this documentary delivers a startling new look at the Peoples Temple, headed by preacher Jim Jones who, in 1978, led more than 900 members to Guyana, where he orchestrated a mass suicide via tainted punch.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
94%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Jonestown is a somber and non-exploitive reconstruction of the events that led the members of the Peoples Temple.

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press
Rotten

Stanley Nelson revisits the 1978 mass suicide of Jim Jones and his flock in Guyana, savoring the horror but offering no new insights.

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
Fresh

Ultimately, the film doesn't entirely answer the massive 'why' at the center of this story -- that answer died on that day in 1978 -- but it's a haunting exploration of an event of unspeakable sadness, which still resonates decades later.

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times
Fresh

A somber, solid documentary [parading] the whole bleak tale before us again, complete with those disturbing scenes of hundreds of corpses in their tees and shorts and flip-flops strewn about facedown in the mud of Jonestown, Guyana.

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post
Fresh

The last half hour of Jonestown is almost unwatchable. Video footage of the assault on the congressman's delegation gives way to audio of Jones exhorting people to 'die with a degree of dignity' as children shriek in the background.

Ty Burr, Boston Globe

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