a review of

riveting at times, totally mid and cringe at others, and overall, missing the point by a mile. for starters, way way way too many self congratulatory monologues from christine. incredibly white saviour vibes. yes, they gained an incredible level of access to this cult / religion to film the events. two amateurs going under cover for over a year. totally unreal and commendable. the main issue though is this documentary thinks the problem is samuel bateman. it treats FLDS as though that is normal and fine. FLDS is essentially the same exact thing as what samuel was doing, and pretty much every trad. interpretation of a patriarchal religion is essentially as abusive (yes, including most of christianity). rape, emotional abuse, control, and coercion are not ok to do to someone of any age. and pretty much every trad. version of a patriarchal religion is up to all that gross bullshit. someone literally at one point says that FLDS had groomed the girls to be susceptible to this. hmmm. at another point, acknowledged that the whole thing had been a lie for generations. hmmm. at another point acknowledged that pretty much everyone depicted in the whole documentary still held in high regard their prior convicted serial rapist false prophet. hmmm. yet the overall tone of the documentary is respectful towards FLDS and seems to simply critique two of their recent serial rapist leaders. so yeah. loses a lot of credibility for me despite being an incredible archival document. also of note, all the police did was: a. cover for the child serial rapist for months. b. pull guns on child sex trafficking survivors. c. badly botch the investigation several times.