Have you ever imagined what it’d be like to cut communication with the people who matter most to you and devote your life to worshiping a cause? To only bond with those who share the same beliefs and shun those who don’t? To follow a strict set of rules determined by your leader in fear, both in genuine admiration and fear? If your answer was no, so was the same for many previous and current cult members who described the experience as deceiving. Many cults don’t begin as sinister but rather recruit members under the guise of friendship, support, education and community.
Surpassing horror and thriller movies, cult documentaries might be the most shocking genre of them all. Not to be confused with the cult classics genre of movies like “Friday” and “Mean Girls,” cult documentaries are the disturbing stories of real-life cults and their leaders. Cults can be political, religious, terrorist, spiritual and more, but what links them all is that they are groups of people that have an obsessive commitment to a figure or idea. Documentaries don’t always equal snoozefest. Here are three documentaries about some of the most outrageous cults in recent history that will have your undivided attention.
- “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin” – HBO Max
“The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin” follows Remnant Fellowship and its former congregation-turned-cult leader Gwen Shamblin in the small, Christian town of Brentwood, TN. Over five jam-packed episodes, the documentary details how Remnant’s insular church leadership traumatized the lives of countless members.
From the outside, Shamblin does not fit the description of a typical cult leader. A petite, blonde and Southern woman with teased blonde hair, she is easily the girl next door. Shamblin struggled with body image and disordered eating throughout her early adulthood, and before she founded Remnant in 1999, she ran a weight loss consultancy and founded the infamous Weigh Down Workshop in the 80s. The workshop advocated against calorie and food restrictions and instead preached eating in moderation, and soon Shamblin was traveling across the country hosting seminars, publishing books and implementing her 12-week program in churches. What began as a non-religious weight loss program evolved into a Christian weight loss program where she helped people turn away from food and lean into God.
With Remnant in full swing in the early 2000s, hundreds of church members and program participants sang the program’s praises, claiming that it helped them drop weight and become closer to God. Membership at Remnant was high and heavily involved, with people wanting to experience Shamblin’s messages and weight loss programs first-hand. Yet once Shamblin established a mass following, the real nightmare began. The documentary tells the unfortunate story of how a rural church made national headlines for its cult-like behavior, child abuse, group disordered eating, ex-communication, power abuse and more. It’s a must-see.
- “Tickled” – Amazon Prime Video
New Zealand reporter David Farrier stumbled across an online video of competitive tickling where men take turns restraining and tickling each other. Figuring it sounded odd enough, Farrier requested an interview with the production company Jane O’Brien Media, who rudely declined by sending derogatory language back at Farrier about his sexuality. Confused and further intrigued, Farrier embarked on a journey to uncover what Jane O’Brien Media and the tickling competitions were all about.
“Tickled” is one of those films that the less you go into it knowing, the better. It’s an extremely entertaining watch – Farrier’s creative investigative reporting and unwillingness to back down resulted in uncovering a disturbing truth about the competitive tickling industry (yes, it is an industry). As a watcher, you feel as though you’re on a journey with Farrier. He brings the audience along for each discovery, undercover spy mission, interview and more.
In the end, as you guessed, nothing was as it seemed. What started as a light-hearted and strangely entertaining watch morphed into a concerning and captivating reveal. “Tickled” is a documentary that you press play on while scrolling through streaming apps out of curiosity that hooks you. Once you watch, you’ll tell your friends to watch it blindly too.
- “Jesus Camp” – Amazon Prime Video
When you mix devout evangelicalism and impressionable children, you create the perfect recipe for a documentary like “Jesus Camp” to be made. “Jesus Camp” documents the Kids on Fire School of Ministry, a summer camp in North Dakota that prided itself on shaping kids into the future of evangelical Christians in America. Firm and dedicated church leader Becky Fisher breathed, slept and dreamed about the summer camp. She loved the opportunity she had to teach kids about Christ.
Unlike “Tickled,” the documentary was recorded completely in the open – no sneaking, hiding and secret filming here. Fisher, the kids in the program and their parents were all extremely happy to share their love for Christ and the summer camp with the producers. There are scenes where the kids’ parents have to plead for them to stop worshiping to eat dinner. It’s bizarre to see children so young be wholly devoted to religion to the point where they no longer feel that they can hang out with other non-religious children.
“Jesus Camp” shows the reality of the cult-like brainwashing of children and explores the ethics behind forcing religion onto young minds. The practices and teachings of Fisher’s church are outlandish and intriguing and make for a thought-provoking watch.