Nothing like an interesting story made uninteresting. Sarah Hope (Lily Rabe) as a child was the sole survivor of a cult suicide from 3/23/1985. Now as an adult she is returning to the secluded ranch (no bars, can't run to get help) with a camera crew who happen to be the larvae of the FBI men who raided the compound. Not to give away too much, but they locate some old film canisters (and 1 VHS) about the cult engaged in soul transmigration.The individual scenes were done okay, but when placed together it somehow didn't make for a great film. Raspberry Award winner Jessica Alba will be looking to add to that list as Maggie who played a deer in the headlights for most of the feature. Hey! Let's capture that look and put it on the DVD cover! The male lead needed someone other than Thomas Jane whose charisma seemed forced upon us. Brad Pitt would have been too expensive, but Billy Drago, or heck even Billy Zane.Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

A lot of people think this is basedon the Jim Jones famous cult massacre but its actually based on the Hale Bop comet cult and its actually a true cult who poisoned each other with an apple pie special over 3 days as they believed aliens were coming to transport them to another world - how some people can fall for these cults is beyond me but it makes for fascinating viewing.Thomas Jane was superb and reminds me of David Koresh another cult nutjob. Jessica Alba was just a bit of fluff on a stick and could have been substituted with any actress! I quite like cult type movies and there haven't been many lately!It is a bit slow but there are some real jump scares - I messed ma pontaloons on at least 3 occasions so its not without its scares.Overall though its pretty standard fair but worth a watch if you are a horror fan!

The Three Acts: The initial tableaux: Jim Jacobs runs a cult camp at Heaven's Veil Ranch, circa 1982. He's a self- appointed mage who does miraculous healing and the like. He does meditation, astral projections, telekinesis, and whatever else will inspire loyalty. His big draw, though, is promising techniques to gain eternal life.Yeah, right.The trick is, one has to die first before getting the big dividend. Indeed, every one at Heaven's Veil does die back in 1982, save for Sarah Hope.Spin forward to the present, roughly. Sarah Hope is recruited by Maggie Price and her brother Christian to do a documentary on the Ranch. Maggie's father was the FBI agent in charge of investigating the Veil, and he ended up hanging himself when Maggie was three years old.Delineation of conflicts: As one might expect, things start to go badly soon after the film starts.The caretaker of Heaven's Veil was not all that welcoming. Film crew member Ed takes the group's van and kills himself by running into a tree at high speed. The group is more than a bit isolated by distance, since they are now all on foot.Sarah finds the more secret parts of the place, which include multiple films of the inner workings of Jim Jacobs' group. The filmmakers hope to find out what the driving forces were behind the mass death at Heaven's Veil. Does something or someone at the Veil want those secrets kept secret?Resolution: The film jumped the shark around 53:00 in. The transition from somewhat reasonable thriller to wholesale supernatural bullshit was sudden. The turnabout at the end was well-written, but I had long since quit caring.

In the intro me meet some cult and how its leader Jim Jacobs leads all the disciples to commit suicide just as the FBI arrives. The group tapes all this. One little girl survives. Now, years later, the girl is an adult and a reporter asks her to help on a project about this commune called Heaven's Veil. The reporter, Maggie, wants to take Sarah, back to the scene of the crime. So off they go with a huge TV crew of indistinct characters. And it's not long before they start bickering. But Maggie isn't some disinterested reporter. Her father was the lead FBI agent on the camp's raid.Once they get there, Sarah has all sorts of flashbacks and as expected there is no cell phone signal. Sarah takes them past the camp to a remote cabin which was Jim's retreat. There they find cameras and tapes and Maggie wants to see them all.They discover that Jim wasn't some power-crazed fool. This guy was something else. At some point the daughter of one his disciples was ill and hospitalized and the doctors offered no hope. He goes into a trance, touches the girl, and she recovers. At another occasion, he takes some medications to again reach trance and takes over a disciple's body momentarily. The third step is to take some cocktail of meds to nearly kill himself and receive an antidote right before his body dies. And with that successful experience he concludes that he can free the soul momentarily from the body to reach the next level. He wants all his disciples to experience this enlightenment. With that, the FBI raid takes on a different meaning altogether.But by then our TV crew starts seeing and hearing things. They become possessed and start killing each other. It gets dark and things become unclear. Sarah who was raised by the entire commune learns who her parents are, and that also changes things.The Veil has an excellent story, no doubt, based on the Jonestown massacre. It presents a fantastic fantasy alternative history if you will, of the events. What if Jim Jacobs was right? Of course here with the twist, it turns out he isn't entirely the villain. That part of The Veil is very compelling. It's the present with the obnoxious crew that's not particularly strong. Ghost stories are hard to pull off. Then there's the obligatory convention that days last minutes and nights last forever and it's dark and you can't see much of what's going on. The cult part of the movie shows that a horror story can be much creepier if told in daylight. What doesn't help either is that in the present, sound and effects are overwhelming, loud, and constant. Fortunately, it's not orchestrated music but digital, still, it's too much and gets distracting.I wasn't expecting much from The Veil but was gladly surprised to find such a developed and smart script. This isn't your mediocre standard pointless horror. It also benefits from a standout performance by Thomas Jane.