Jonestown Massacre: As We Watched

It's difficult to cover the history of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple and the massacre in 47 minutes but the coverage of the actual visit to Jonestown and the massacre only takes up about 11 minutes of the show. When retelling what happened on the airstrip, the show missed much of what happened. If the show is to believed as gospel, there were a number of people who were also shot at the aisrstrip that must have imagined what happened to themselves because they were never mentioned in this film

The title misleads the viewers into thinking this is a docudrama about the massacre but the reality is that it's but a minor part of the show..

I thought this was a wonderful documentary of what was going on in Jim Jones's church, Jonestown, and the way the people were treated in this "church."

I think I've watched every documentary that was presented about this cult. And, I watch the TV movie that was made, as well. Even after all that, thinking that I heard it all, I learned new information from this documentary, and some very sad and cruel things that were done to his followers. I heard, of the first time, Jim Jones laughing as people talked about how they would like to torture family members!

I heard Jim Jones' son talking about his interactions with his father, and what he observed first hand.

I think that this was the most honest documentary about the tragedy of Jim Jones followers, and the horrors of his "church." I believe that some of the information was kept "secret" at the time, because of the outrage and disbelief of what happened in Jonestown!

Well worth watching if you are interested in this tragedy and THINK you've heard it all.

And, one thing that really caught my attention was the way a follower, Tim Stone, spoke of Jim Jones. It sounded just like Tom Cruise talking about DAVID MISCAVIGE!

Another reviewer criticizes this for not spending enough time on the actual massacre. If a person really needs more footage and reportage of the awful suicide/murder at Jonestown, then maybe this isn't the documentary for you. If instead you want to understand how Jim Jones and so many people wound up in Jonestown dying, then this is a decent short documentary. The story of Jones and Jonestown isn't just a spectacular one-day event of murder and suicide, it was how Jones went from an outsider boy in Indiana with a bent toward fundamental religion, to develop a once-idealilstic but progressively manipulative all-encompassing organization in rural California, on to becoming a controlling, addicted, paranoiac madman who brainwashed mostly poor and downtrodden men, women, and children into killing themselves in a terrible jungle in South America. The whole story isn't just the suicides/murders, it's about how Jones became god-like in his mind and convinced vulnerable people that life as he dictated it was somehow better than they could do on their own. Jonestown wasn't just a place, it was an evolving state of mind. This doc is too short to show it all, but a good place for people new to the subject to start.