Sound of Freedom: Unpacking the endless controversy around the QAnon-linked movie

You might have heard rumblings about Sound of Freedom, the new indie-action movie causing quite the stir Stateside. Since its surprising toppling of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the U.S. box office in July, it has rocketed into the top ten highest-grossing films of the year, propelled by ecstatic endorsements from high-profile conservative backers.

Alejandro Monteverde’s film presents itself as a classic kidnapping thriller, in the style of Man on Fire or Double Jeopardy. But there’s a real-world twist: it’s inspired by the allegedly true story of U.S. government agent Tim Ballard, whose beat was to track down and arrest distributors of child porn. The film posits that Ballard, played by Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ‘s Jesus), was so affected by his work that he elected to take matters into his own hands, departing on a one-man rescue mission to save trafficked kids in Colombia.

It reads as innocent enough on paper: swap Colombia for Paris, and Caviezel for Liam Neeson, and it’s basically Taken. So what’s all the fuss about? Well, Sound of Freedom has been linked by some critical commentators in the U.S. to the major conspiracy theory QAnon, which espouses the lofty fiction that an evil cabal of political and cultural elites are trading in trafficked children to harvest the chemical adrenochrome from their blood, prolonging youthfulness, like vampiric Botox.

The film itself doesn’t directly reference the conspiracy theory, but it has been historically championed by Caviezel, and prominent QAnon proponents have since marshalled around it. Sound of Freedom has also attracted the support of such high-profile firebrands and controversy courters as Jordan Peterson, Mel Gibson and Former President Donald Trump, who hosted a screening at his golf club in New Jersey last month.

It comes to UK cinemas on 31 August, so we’ll finally be able to see what everyone has been losing their minds over across the Atlantic. In the meantime, here’s the rundown on the success of Sound of Freedom so far, and the controversy that continues to linger.

The bell starts ringing: Sound of Freedom beats Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office

The sleeper hit first took headlines when it pipped the new Indiana Jones to the box office top spot on the fourth of July. This was Sound of Freedom‘s opening day, traditionally the most lucrative for new releases, and towards the end of Indiana Jones‘ first week at cinemas, after it had made the bulk of its early money — major blockbusters being heavily bookended towards their opening weekend.

To say Sound of Freedom won out on equal ground, then, is perhaps a little tenuous, but this was still an astonishing feat: while one was a major blockbuster sequel with the marketing heft of Disney behind it, the other was a relatively low-budget niche release largely reliant on word of mouth online and beyond.