�Director Christopher Cain misuses this shameful moment in frontier history to promote a hokey love story along with a message about the dangers of religious extremism. There are no mitigating circumstances for such savagery, of course, but Cain isn't interested in exploring what went wrong. Instead, he equates the institution of the Mormon church with Islamic extremism at every opportunity. It's an evil empire, and he even cooks up some fictional atrocities to bolster his position as if the massacre itself wasn't terrible enough. The fact that it occurred on Sept. 11 is noted prominently . . . The Mountain Meadows massacre deserves more than this: a serious consideration instead of a distasteful and amateurish melodrama.� — Chris Gladden, Roanoke Times

�It is unprecedented — or close to it — that a writer needs to disclose his affiliations before reviewing a film, but 'September Dawn' presents such a situation. So here it goes: I have no connection with the Mormon Church, and neither sympathize with it nor oppose it. From that 'neutral' point of view, 'September Dawn' appears a sandwich of a film, with a purpose on top, a biased view on the bottom, and a poorly made movie in-between . . . Predictable, obvious, often silly, with a painfully poor script ('I curse the Gentiles, grrrrr!'), 'September Dawn' doesn�t so much expose fanaticism as lays an egg in a fanatical crusade of its own.� — San Francisco Examner

�Audience fears going into 'September Dawn' are that the film might depict Utah and the LDS Church in a negative light and therefore prove to be a tremendous embarrassment. And as it turns out, this heavily fictionalized drama about the 1857 incident known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre does depict Utah and the church in the worst possible way, and it is indeed a tremendous embarrassment — for the filmmakers. And that includes the cast. For many of them, this film represents a career low. In fact, the filmmaking here is so incompetent and laughably awful that it recalls the work of schlockmeister Ed Wood ('Plan 9 From Outer Space').� — Jeff Vice, Deseret Morning News