September Dawn Gets No Rise
September Dawn, a second-rate B movie, claiming to tell the truth about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and pinning the whole thing on Brigham Young, has been panned in a Slant magazine review on the Internet that is worth reading. The film, produced for release last year, and then having a continually slipping release date this year, will finally be released August 24, according to the most recent announcements.
Obviously, since the film cannot find a home in the theater, this is not a film that viewers are holding their breath for, but it will receive some audience, so it is important to know that reviewers will likely see it for what it is – a virulent anti-Mormon film.
As Slant reviewer Nick Schager said, “September Dawn is the year’s first honest-to-goodness exploitation flick, utilizing its “inspired by true events” yarn about the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre for tear-jerking, righteous indignation-stoking melodrama.
“Yet the clunky, heavily skewed means by which this tale is presented is nothing short of egregious, with its Mormon characters demonized with such laughable gusto, and its Christian victims cast in such a holy, noble light, that the project quickly feels less like an attempt at historical truth-telling than like shameless anti-Mormon propaganda.”