CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (TV Series) Shooting Stars (2005) User Reviews

Jim Jones Redux

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 6 February 2021]

Moderately interesting episode involving a cult that feels after suicide they would end up in paradise--cosmic paradise. A man's body is found in the yard of a couple who live on the edge of the desert. He has been dragged three miles and dumped. When Catherine and Gil go into the desert, they find an old compound and there are beds filled with the dead. This is a different plot line where it doesn't involve show girls or hookers dead in the street.

The Cult and the Mass Suicide

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 26 January 2023]

During the night, Mr. And Mrs. Copeland hears noise in their home and their dog barking. He asks her to call the police while he goes downstairs with a pistol. He finds a dirty man eating inside his kitchen and he chases him. Out of the blue, he finds several dirty people in his garden that flee and he sees that they dumped a body on his garden. Capt. Brass and the entire CSI team investigate the case, and Grissom notes that there are shooting stars in the sky. He follows the track of the runaways on the desert with Catherine and they stumble upon an abandoned underground base, where they discover eleven bodies laying on the bed. Their further investigation shows that the group belonged to a cult organized by a con-artist named Joseph Diamond that recruit susceptible young people to believe that they would join a mother-ship in the sky. Now they are looking for Joseph and another possible survivor.

"Shooting Stars" is an interesting episode of "CSI", about a group of worshippers of a cult that believe the followers will have better life when they die and go to an UFO for better place. The cult is fruit of a scam, but something happens that makes it ending in a tragedy. Clea DuVall has a short, but important participation in the plot. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Shooting Stars"

Leaves A Bad Taste

[ccthemovieman-1 · 5/10 · 5 March 2007]

A man and his wife are sleeping when their barking dog outside wakes them up. The man goes downstairs and discovers someone raiding his refrigerator. That guy races outside in the backyard where the husband sees a group - maybe 20 people, all very dirty-looking - standing there. They run off.

It turns out a body was left lying on the ground. The man has many, many injuries, too many to count. What happened to him? Who were all those people?

We see all kinds of strange scenes in this one-story episode, such a bombed-out car, another car with a body in the trunk, and most shocking: eleven recently-deceased bodies of young people lying in cots in an underground bunker. That's all part of a "Heaven's Gate"- type cult in which college age kids are recruited, believing some meteor shower is going to bring them to some kind of bliss in another world....or something like that.

The episode is interesting but too preachy, getting in a few religious cheap shots in here with numerous Biblical analogies.

Like the drink the kids took, this show left a bad taste my mouth.