Why everyone is talking about Sound Of Freedom and when it arrives here

Released in American cinemas on the 4th of July this year, Sound Of Freedom has proved to be the kind of cinematic surprise that so rarely exists anymore… but not necessarily for good reasons.

At the time of writing, the movie has made $149 million in the States alone, meaning it has made more money there this year than mega-blockbusters like Fast X, Scream VI or the latest Mission Impossible.

That is a huge achievement for an indie movie with a budget of less than $15 million, from a distribution company (Angel Films) that most people would never have heard of, and off the back of not great reviews, as it currently stands at 43% on Metacritic.

Off the back of its popularity, Angel Films has now announced that Sound Of Freedom will begin rolling out worldwide, including confirmed release dates for Ireland and the UK.

But whether or not the movie will garner the same level of popularity – and notoriety – outside of America remains to be seen. We will get to that, but first, here is the trailer:

Sound Of Freedom has proved massively popular with a very specific audience

The movie tells the story of a real-life former government agent Tim Ballard (played by Jim Caviezel) who heads to Colombia to rescue children from sex traffickers. During interviews following the movie’s release, Caviezel told journalists that he believes this is the second-most important role of his career, behind only the titular role in 2004’s The Passion of the Christ.

Since the movie’s release, many outlets have connected the movie’s popularity with faith-based audiences, as well as the connection with QAnon. As a reminder, QAnon believers support the theory that a devil-worshipping elite run the world as we know it, with The Washington Post revealing that both Ballard and Caviezel have expressed support for some of QAnon’s wildest claims.

At a conference in Oklahoma, Caviezel said that Ballard was supposed to join him on stage, but “he’s down there saving children as we speak, because they’re pulling kids out of the darkest recesses of hell right now, in … all kinds of places, uh, the adrenochroming of children.”

When asked to elaborate, Caviezel continued: “If a child knows he’s going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline. These people that do it, there’ll be no mercy for them. This is one of the best films I’ve ever done in my life. The film is on Academy Award level.”

In reality, adrenochrome is a relatively mundane compound, but has been jokingly portrayed by Hunter S. Thompson as a kind of super-drug popular with pedophiles in his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The Guardian and CNN have supplied similar reports connecting Sound Of Freedom to QAnon supporters, which has only led to further conspiracy theories, including multiple reports of people showing up to “sold out” screenings, only to discover that the cinemas were almost entirely empty.

@didyoucatchthis The Conspiracy Thickens, have you experienced anything strange while trying to watch “Sound Of Freedom”? #movietok #soundoffreedom #foryoupage #movie ♬ original sound – Did You Catch This?

As it turns out, the movie ends with a message and link to the movie’s website, suggesting that cinema-goers buy another ticket “for someone who would not otherwise be able to see the film“, but these tickets are then going unclaimed, leading to multiple seemingly mostly empty screenings.

While the movie itself doesn’t have any direct connections or even explicit mentions of any conspiracies, it has seemingly attracted that very fervent audience in the States, and now we’ll see if it will continue that level of popularity elsewhere in the world.

Sound Of Freedom is now due to arrive in cinemas in Ireland and the UK on Friday, 1 September this year.