The Sacrament

History doesn’t side with The Sacrament, a low-budget thriller in which the execution can’t match the ambition.

Essentially, the film is a fictionalized retelling of the Jonestown massacre, the 1978 incident in South America in which cult leader Jim Jones brainwashed almost 1,000 people at his Peoples Temple commune into an act of mass suicide.

The story has inspired a handful of documentaries as well as the riveting Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, a 1980 television miniseries for which Powers Boothe won an Emmy in the title role.

The Sacrament changes the names of the places and characters, perhaps in an effort to distance itself or carve its own niche. Maybe such comparisons are unfair, or maybe they’re exactly what the film deserves.

Yet while this dark and subversive mock-documentary, which employs the found-footage conceit in a mildly effective manner, shows some thematic maturity for director Ti West (The Innkeepers), it ultimately lacks the courage to follow through on its convictions.

The story chronicles the journey of opportunistic broadcast journalists Sam (A.J. Bowen) and Jake (Joe Swanberg), who follow a photographer (Kentucker Audley) to Eden Parish, a rural compound in a foreign country where he suspects his sister, Caroline (Amy Seimetz) is being held against her will.

When they arrive, the trio is greeted with a mix of curiosity and contempt. Caroline is all smiles as she boasts of the peaceful Christian atmosphere and the leadership of the persuasive and eccentric pastor known as Father (Gene Jones), who even agrees to an interview with the visitors.

Yet soon afterwards, the journalists are given ominous clues by some of the residents that not everything is as it seems. As their suspicion grows, they snoop around to the point where they realize that not only are their own lives in danger, but so are those of everyone under Father’s power.

The film’s unsettling first hour is due in large part to Jones (No Country for Old Men), whose charismatic performance could lead to a breakthrough late in his career.

Ultimately, what starts as a slow-burning and suspenseful story of religious fanaticism settles for a conventionally brutal resolution, with muddled social context and more narrative questions than answers.

Rated R, 95 minutes.