We’ve been living in a cult and true crime-obsessed era for a while now. There’s a podcast, book, YouTube video, Wikipedia page, TikTok, or documentary for every terrible thing that’s happened in the past century. Most of these projects tend to dwell on the gruesome details: the weapons, the crime scenes, the killers’ psychology. But HBO Max’s Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults is a rare example of a docuseries that takes a different, almost refreshing, approach to the genre.
Instead of reducing the members of one of America’s most infamous cults to punchlines or faceless victims, the docuseries treats them with compassion and empathy. As this Letterboxd user wrote, “It’s so easy for people to mock cults and cult members and to victim-blame but the series strives to point out the incorrect thinking tied with these thoughts and point it all back to the fact that these were people who were vulnerable and were seeking something more for themselves.”
Watching it now, it’s hard not to think about the broader true crime ecosystem and the way we talk about victims. It’s also hard not to think of the 2023 Canadian psychological horror film Red Rooms (you can read our review here).
If Red Rooms critiques our appetite for cruelty, then Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults offers an example of what it looks like when documentary filmmaking is rooted in empathy rather than exploitation. Be warned: this is not a feel-good watch, but I think it’s one of the few docuseries that is worth your time. Just have some tissues nearby. You’re going to need them.
Categorized:News
