Two journalists document their friend's search for their missing sister. They travel to "Eden Parish", a small religious community led by a mysterious man known as "Father". It soon becomes clear that this idyllic utopia is not what it seems.
This movie contain examples of the following tropes:
- Affably Evil: Father is a very charismatic individual.
- Alas, Poor Villain: A small one.
- Father: Why couldn't you leave us alone?
- All for Nothing: Savannah's mother instigates the tragedy by trying to get her daughter shipped to safety, but everyone in the cult ends up dying.
- Anthropic Principle: For anything to show up in the film, someone must be filming it, so the Vice journalists remain surprisingly committed to recording the events around them even as their lives are in danger, and the villains for some reason start picking up cameras and documenting things when the journalists aren't around.
- Ate His Gun: Father's suicide.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: This is Father's argument for the mass suicide, saying that America will soon be sending soldiers to kill them all.
- Buried in a Pile of Corpses: Sam pulls Sarah's corpse over the top of him to hide amongst the bodies of the cult members.
- Cradling Your Kill: Caroline does this as she kills her brother.
- Crapsaccharine World: Eden Parish initially comes off as a self-sustained utopia where people can live together regardless of the race or background. It's only until later that we find out that the people aren't allowed to leave, and those that disobey the rules are severely punished.
- Creepy Child: Savannah.
- Cult: Eden Parish in a nutshell.
- Death of a Child:
- We see a mother feeding her infant poison during the mass suicide.
- Then there is Savannah's mother slashing her own daughter's throat to prevent her from getting shot by the guards.
- Downer Ending: Also a Foregone Conclusion. Given the story's connection to Jonestown, there's only so many ways this can end up.
- Drinking the Kool-Aid: The Jonestown-inspired finale.
- The Dragon: Caroline serves as this to Father.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: By the end of the film, everyone except for the two Vice reporters are dead.
- Foreshadowing: The cult's dark underbelly is hinted at right off the bat by the armed and suspicious guards, and Caroline's initial comments about the cult's enemies.
- Freakier Than Fiction: The events in the film are much tamer than the actual events at Jonestown. 918 people died in real life, compared to the less than two hundred in the film. Also, the murdered outsiders are only reporters in the film, while an actual US Congressman was murdered by the people of Jonestown in real life.
- Holier Than Thou: Father claims to be this. At the end of the film, we see him snorting coke, and it's implied he's having sex with Caroline.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Caroline has a wordless version of this reaction after she kills her brother.
- Wendy, the parish's doctor, also has a silent version of this upon seeing the bodies of the parish members littering the grounds around her. When she later killed herself as well, she left behind a note asking for forgiveness.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Sam has this reaction when he learns that his interview of Father will take place in front of his entire congregation. He had been planning to "go hard" at him, and he can be seen nervously checking his notes before the interview starts. Afterwards, he admits that he got spooked and didn't ask most of his intended questions.
- The reporters have this reaction when they read Savannah's note, saying "Please help us."
- The Oner: Due to being a mockumentary, many scenes are played in a single take. However, the film does cut between different angles during a number of scenes. This is sometimes explained by Patrick's camera shooting B-Roll, while other times there is no in-universe explanation.
- Product Placement: The film is presented as a documentary by Vice Media, and it opens with an explanation of what Vice is.
- Scary Black Man: The guards patrolling the outskirts of Eden Parish are comprised of this.
- Self-Immolation: Caroline's suicide.
- The Voice: We only hear Father over the intercom for the first half of the film.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Inspired from the real life Jonestown Massacre, to an eerie degree; the death speech is essentially a loose recreation of the ones Jones actually made. Father making the threat that the government will send soldiers to kill his followers and steal their children was also a real-life threat Jim Jones used to urge his congregation to mass suicide.
