**TVMA**
Runtime: 2 Hrs and 1 Minute
Production Companies: Amos Pictures, HBO Documentary Films
Distributor: MAX
Director: Dan Reed
Release Date: March 26, 2024
***SXSW 2024 Coverage***

Alex Jones makes me embarrassed to bear the same last name. Jones is a common surname, sure. I'm certain there are more good Joneses than bad ones. Yet, Alex Jones spews the dangerous right-wing extremist rhetoric he employs through his Infowars channel toward his gullible demographic, specifically his neverending assault on the 26 families affected by the devastating Sandy Hook mass shooting incident in 2012. The moment these poor, grieving families lost their young children, Jones swooped in and robbed them of their mourning with his onslaught of lies that went on for years. In the HBO documentary feature The Truth vs. Alex Jones, the infamous fibber finds out (having to pay $1 billion in damages) after years of fucking around with the families, and it was the most cathartic viewing experience. But it's also a harrowing illustration of the rise of conspiracy theorists popularized in our digital age.

On December 14, 2012, a gunman went to Sandy Hook Elementary and murdered numerous students, teachers, and the principal. In a matter of six to nine minutes, over a dozen kids were dead, and the moment upended the lives of twenty-six families. The unspeakable incident shocked the nation, and the families immediately became co-opted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose popularity on YouTube through his channel Infowars had skyrocketed. In a matter of hours, they called the event a hoax and went on to mock and scold the entire Sandy Hook community for many years. This event led to the parents getting harassed both online and in person until the ones who had enough filed a lawsuit against Jones.

The film starts by chronicling the career of Jones, who went from Public Access Radio in Austin, Texas, to the clown liar, supplement seller, and con man he is now, claiming that the American government carried 9/11 moments after the incident spiked his popularity.

After that, the film pivots into recounting the fateful day of December 14, 2012, through the voices of the many families affected by the incident. While I remember the day I heard about the mass shooting event on the news, it's even harder to listen to the details of the massacre from the courageous families on camera. Dan Reed consciously and thoughtfully gave the grieving families a platform to speak their truths and recount the devastating experience from memory. It's hard not to feel empathy as families unearth those emotions in real-time through talking head interviews. The most grueling moment is one of the parents naming each dead person by memory without flinching. Each name made me cry even more, to the extent that a lady beside me gave me a tissue.

Then the film brings the hammer down, detailing every single tier of hell Jones put these parents through in his beliefs that the whole event was a hoax. While these parents were doing the bare minimum to mourn their lost kids, he was fanning the flames to his conspiracy theory-obsessed and mentally unstable audience. One of which was Wolfgang Halbig, a former security guard and one of the loudest Sandy Hook deniers due to the lack of "trauma helicopters" appearing on the scene.

Reed puts Jones’ scamming behavior on full display, acting like a buffoon ready to die on a hill of lies if there's a camera on him but distancing himself from it when no one’s recording him. The most damning footage is one where Jones is interrogated and is read accounts from paramedics in the aftermath detailing how mutilated the bodies of the children were. You see the shock in Jones' face. As soulless as he is, he acknowledges the horror that went down that day.

As the film delves into the parents of the late Jesse Lewis, Neil Heslin, and Scarlett Lewis, who take him to court for defamation, you yearn for justice. The Truth vs. Alex Jones instantly becomes the essential court movie of the year – one that'll make you feel as if you're in a madhouse – considering how impactful his dangerous spread of misinformation was for the targeted families. The moment Heslin/Lewis' lawyer, Attorney Mark Bankston, stated that 75,000,000 Americans (approximately 24% of the nation's population) bought into Jones' theory, it was so staggering it'd make you want to give up on humanity and wish for our eradication. Just wipe us out like the dinosaurs.

It's clear from the jump that the doc tributes the resilience of the Sandy Hook surviving families, finally getting their retribution for the pain this Jabba, the Right-Wing-Hut of a man, caused. That said, I wish the film had taken a stance on the discussion of social media brands and the lack of regulation in speech across the years that contributed to the abuse. It doesn't delve into the rise of technology between events like Columbine to now when Jones was a nobody and ended up rising the ranks thanks to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter and how those services enabled voices like him.

Sidebar: Seeing Alex Jones get his cinematic ripping in his hometown was surreal. It was also terrifying because I couldn't tell who was in the audience. Shout out to the old white woman who kept looking back at me every time I laughed at the surreal, cathartic moments of Jones getting caught red-handed as the pathological liar that he is.

As heart-wrenching as it is cathartic, The Truth vs. Alex Jones is a captivating and harrowing portrait of real families going up against the evil ringleader of the right-wing circus.