If you’re in the market for a dark new docuseries, you’re in luck: the third instalment of the Emmy award-winning and critically acclaimed franchise One Day In America is about to drop this summer.

Directed by Marian Mohamed, Cult Massacre: One Day In America tells the story of “an idealistic religious organisation led by the infamous Jim Jones, who set out to establish a utopian community in Guyana,” reveals the official synopsis.

Come 1978, however, US representative Leo Ryan was urged by his constituents to launch an investigation into the Peoples Temple, with many reporting that coercion and torture were taking place at Jonestown.

“What began as a peaceful movement seeking social justice [had] ultimately spiralled,” continues the synopsis.

Ryan and five others were shot dead by members of the Temple’s Red Brigade security squad. And, over in Jonestown, Jones set in motion the fatal events that would leave 918 people dead.

Watch the trailer for Cult Massacre: One Day In Jonestown below.

The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” has long been a metaphor for buying into something that defies common sense. It was first inspired, however, by the horrifyingly literal events that took place at Jonestown on 18 November 1978, when the cult leader served cyanide-laced beverages to more than 900 members of his apocalyptic Peoples Temple.

In a bid to better understand how so many people fell under Jones’s thrall, the three-part docuseries deftly blends never-before-seen footage and recordings with eyewitness accounts from former members of the cult, including Thom Bogue, Leslie Wagner Wilson and Yulanda Williams. 

Interviews with congress members and reporters who attended the scene are also included, and Special Ops Air Force Sgt. David Netterville (one of the first people to enter Jonestown in the immediate aftermath of the mass murder-suicide) shares his own story for the very first time.

The result? An “impressive example of investigative filmmaking – which promises to bring a new perspective to a chilling moment in recent American history, not to mention grant Jones’ victims a voice for the first time”.

You can stream Cult Massacre: One Day In Jonestown via Disney Plus from Monday 17 June.

Images: Getty