Like many of us, I’m a sucker for cult documentaries: “The Vow” (sex slavery); “Wild Wild Country” (Indian “guru”); “Waco: American Apocalypse.”
Nor am I averse to a good true crime drama: “The Making of a Murderer”; “The Staircase.”
I’ve seen a ton of these movies over the years, but I generally space them out: two here, another one six months later.
Recently, however, I got wind of a new four-episode Netflix series called “Trust Me: The False Prophet.”
Its subject was the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a rogue branch of Mormonism that I already happened to know combined the creepiest aspects of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Stepford Wives,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” Stalinist Russia, and Aztec child sacrifice.
A must-watch, clearly! I wasn’t even subscribed to Netflix, but within minutes, I’d signed up for a month.
“Trust Me” was about a dough-faced, none-too-bright guy named Samuel Bateman who wore a white leather Elvis jacket, drove a Bentley, and had 20 wives, some as young as 9 years old.
FLDS female members are all required to wear long-sleeved, ankle-length pastel-colored prairie dresses; style their hair in back-combed braids, rolls, and poufs; and cluster adoringly about their homely and, in many cases, ancient, polygamous husbands.
Samuel Bateman got put away for 50 years, thank the Lord.
Next thing I knew, I was devouring another four-part series: “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.” This one was about Bateman’s predecessor, another gruesome pedophile polygamist who is now, again thankfully, serving life in prison.
I became briefly obsessed, scrolling through the Instagram feeds of some of the women who had bravely fled the noxious cult. I skimmed an e-book by escapee Rebecca Musser called “The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice” (Grand Central Publishing, $19.99). I watched a bunch more YouTube videos on the FLDS.
Meanwhile, Netflix has a notoriously fiendish “interface” that prevents a leisurely browse through its whole catalog. Once “it” knows you’ve watched eight solid hours of unimaginable alternate-universe depravity, the algorithm just sends you scads more of the same kind of fare.
The upshot was that every night for a week I was still lying in bed at 1 a.m. mindlessly scrolling through “What Jennifer Did” (hired assassins to shoot her parents); “The Perfect Neighbor” (playground rights turned deadly); “The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill” (attempted murder by horse trainer of dressage client); “The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson” (cyclist: many athletes, you learn from these films, suffer from profound mental illness); “Sins of Our Mother” (more messianic goons; multiple murders of children and spouses); “Murder in Monaco” (ex-Green Beret valet “accidentally” asphyxiated billionaire boss and secretary); “The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman”; Lucy Letby (neonatal nurse, don’t ask).
This from someone who has often, insufferably, bragged: “I’m not really much of a binge-watcher.”
They follow a template, these movies. They tend to start with a frantic, semi-garbled 911 call (often, as it turns out, made by the perpetrator). Over ominous thudding music, a talking head — cop, investigator, DA, lawyer, coroner — then reports that in 10, 20, 30 years, never has he or she seen a case as twisted, gruesome, and/or violent as this one. A relative or friend, bathed in heavy shadow, next displays an incriminating or prescient text on their phone.
Then comes grainy time-stamped footage of a clear pathological liar, narcissist, or sociopath in a potato sack-like garment in an interrogation room. The suspect fidgets, paces, and sinks down, head in hands, as the alibis and fabrications slowly unravel.
Everyone looks pasty, exhausted, unhealthy, untruthful, and borderline berserk. (The exception is escapees from the Fundamentalist Mormons, all of whom have perfect teeth and look like country-western stars or models). Everyone seems to live in a drab, sand-colored house outside Phoenix or Denver. Everyone eats fast food. Nobody reads.
From our voyeuristic perch, it’s easy to forget that these are actual living, breathing human beings: now locked away for life, stewing in their own insanity; and/or blindly trying to make their way through life burdened by unspeakable trauma.
We do long for justice. We feel a sense of rightness when the bad guy (or gal) is caught. But the long-term cathartic or instructive aspect of these documentaries is virtually nil. There is never any real resolution. The sins of the fathers and mothers are visited upon yet another generation. The sex trafficking, drug running, and cons continue.
Meanwhile, I had all too easily morphed into a member of the Mount Calvary mob, jeering: “Crucify him!” (or her).
What bothered me in retrospect was this: Even as I lay hour after hour in the dark, shaking my head in disbelief at how otherwise seemingly normal people could fall prey to such obvious lies and such blatant manipulators, I myself had descended into the kind of trance-like state displayed by many cult followers.
“You decide for me,” was the subtext. “Don’t make me think too hard. Don’t let me feel. I’m just going to passively lie here even as I know on some level that my desire and will are turning to mush.”
I thought of the assassin bug, an insect I’d once read about that, using a needle-like proboscis, injects a mixture of enzymes and toxins that paralyze its prey and dissolve its internal organs into a liquid “soup,” which the predator then sucks out and feeds on.
Why was I not praying for these people? Why was I not praying to power off my laptop?
I’m not saying I’ll never watch another cult or true crime documentary, but I did cancel the Netflix subscription.
And I’ve been thinking a lot of the righteous man described in Isaiah 33:14–16:
“Brushing his hands free of contact with a bribe, stopping his ears lest he hear of bloodshed, closing his eyes lest he look on evil.
“He shall dwell on the heights, his stronghold shall be the rocky fastness, his food and drink in steady supply.”
