Keith Raniere from New York was convicted of several federal crimes, including sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor. He was the founder of NXIVM, a multi-level marketing company that was later revealed to be a cult, a veritable sex cult that abused women. This series by Oscar-nominated, husband-and-wife team, Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim (
The Square and
Ramy), tells the story of several of the women who were part of the cult but who escaped and are now fighting against it.
The first episode and initial episodes following attempt to explain what NXIVM actually does. NXIVM seems to provide counseling or college-like courses where people take classes in order to learn to be successful or improve their lives psychologically. As the episodes progress and we see some of the practices in which high-ranking members of NXIVM engage, it's clear that NXIVM feels akin to the Church of Scientology. NXIVM began in the late 90's and early 2000's, so it's possible that people who were pulled into it early didn't realize the comparisons that can be made now in hindsight. Scientology started receiving negative press beginning in 2005, following the controversy surrounding Tom Cruise. Yet, it wouldn't be until a decade or so later that a ton of media would be unleashed really documenting and criticizing Scientology in a public way with people like Leah Remini.
Sarah Edmondson is the first of the abused women that we meet who used to be a member of NXIVM but is now away from it and fighting against it. She talks about how she came to be involved, how it mainly involved her infatuation or intrigue with Raniere. However, Edmondson isn't the one who really gets the ball rolling. Australian actress and singer, Bonnie Piesse is the one whom we see as the first to wake up and realize that NXIVM was a cult and she needed to separate from it. It was hard because she was married to Mark Vicente, a filmmaker from South Africa who was also a member of NXIVM and considered himself a good friend to Raniere.
Obviously, that's a hurdle that people have to overcome. Deep and loving relationships are torn apart between those who want to leave the cult and those who want to stay because they don't believe the accusations or they don't see them because of loyalty or devotion to Raniere. The filmmakers have the interviews and the access to those who left the cult. Archival footage and taped conversations provide insight into those who stayed in it. We follow as we see the rise of the cult and eventually how these certain individuals had to extricate themselves from it.
Unfortunately, unlike Netflix's
Tiger King or HBO's
McMillions or even Showtime's
Outcry. which were all documentary series that came out this year, this series drags or at least it feels like it drags. Those aforementioned series had a lot of ups and downs or twists and turns. All of them had that, or at least it felt as though they did, given that each of those aforementioned series were able to tell their stories in a shorter amount of time than this one. This series is nine episodes, each about a hour long and it feels like it's stretching to fill those nine hours.
We are able to sit and get to know each of the people involved here better. After a while, things felt a little repetitive and that the series took too long to get to some of the more significant points. For example, one of the key things that sets this cult apart is the branding that would occur. Women were actually branded like cattle. A symbol representing Keith Raniere and his associate Allison Mack was literally burned into the flesh of various women. It's a slow burn, no pun intended, to get there narrative-wise, and it's perhaps too slow a burn.
One thing that's never questioned is the fact that this cult seemed to be predominantly white. All the video and archival footage of meetings or events seem to consist exclusively of white people. There seemed to be a supreme lacking of people of color in NXIVM overall. The formation of this cult is something that this series certainly explores, how people are brought in and then exploited. There's no examination though of the racial, gender or socioeconomic makeup. That could perhaps convey something, but the filmmakers didn't seem to have much concern for that.
Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 9 eps.
Available on HBO.
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