10 Horror Movies You Didn't Know Were Based On True Stories

3. The Sacrament

The Sacrament
Magnolia Pictures

The poster for 2013's The Sacrament promises to show us the "untold story" of the tragedy at Eden Parish, a fictional settlement within the film that is inhabited by a seemingly peaceful community of people. As it turns out, this commune has a dark underbelly involving suicide and abuse, with the film culminating in dozens of people consuming cyanide-laced drinks.

This plot is based on the real-life Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which 918 people - members of an American cult, led by Reverend Jim Jones - were ordered to commit mass suicide by drinking fruit punch laced with cyanide.

The film is presented in the found-footage format, with a group of journalists visiting the remote Eden Parish to make a documentary. By the end, one of these journalists is dead, which mirrors the Jonestown massacre, where several journalists were also killed while on a mission to learn more about the cult. The film's cult leader also commits suicide, just like his real-life counterpart, Jim Jones.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!