Thanks for the memories!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I came upon this film on BBC One late one night working. I worked out the story in a few minutes and I must say, I have rarely seen more rubbish on my television screen. The story, and I must say it did surprise me that this film is based on a short story first published in that excellent magazine The New Yorker, is a hopeless nonsense. It is completely unrealistic as the nature of this small town would have come out a long time ago but more importantly, it is historically impossible.The idea is that here is a small, rural New England town with its deeply rooted traditions. Well, these communities where all founded on Christianity and the idea that they would be into human sacrifice is just plain stupid. This goes against the very fundamentals of Christianity. The fact that they sacrifice these people by stoning them is even worse. Did the author actually read the Bible? "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone", Jesus says, not "If you have sinned and want forgiveness, stone this poor woman.".The fact that the acting stinks and it has those commercial break type cuts which makes it so obviously a TV movie does not help. Forget this film.

This is a horrible movie. The dialouge sounds like it was written by Bozo the clown. Whoever made this pathetic adaptation of a famous short story should be ashamed of themselves. Grade: * out of ****

The problem with this movie is that there really aren't any surprises. It takes Shirley Jackson's very short story about a New England town's annual ritual and uses it as a basis for a detective story as Dan Cortese comes to New Hope, with the hope of uncovering his past and his father's deathbed request. Even someone who has never heard of Shirley Jackson can figure out the town's secret long before Cortese does (it gives it away right in the opening credits!). The direction is okay and the acting passable, but the script fails to bring out anything new in the familiar story. ****spoiler warning**** Don't you think the FBI would be on to the town after fifty years and be grateful when a witness came forward?

I found this movie completely sickening and disgusting. Now I'm not one to give out bad movie reviews but this was just horrible. There's no question about it, something was mentally wrong with the person who wrote this. It's just unbelievably inhumane. The ideas in the movie are just so farfetched and horrible, I can't believe someone actually would want to see a movie about people getting pelted to death with rocks by their friends and family and neighbors all because they won a lottery. It's just a stupid movie. I reccomend that if it's on, just keep channel flipping.