Usually when you see documentaries on cults, you get the weird stuff first and it makes it hard to understand how people get into these things. This documentary series brings you into NXIVM as you would if you were discovering it as an interested person, and then a new member, and you get deeper into it before you start learning about the really bizarre stuff, just as the people featured in this series did. Created by 2 extremely clever people, one of whom is a nurse and counselor, the insights NXIVM offered folks are attractive, helpful and at least partially true. For the first time I could see how an intelligent person could get caught up in this. It helps that rather than getting just talking heads looking back on the events, this features a wealth of material from a filmmaker who became the organization's person in charge of media. So we see things as they happened, we get clips from their official training videos, we get interviews with the cult leader and can see firsthand his charm and subtle manipulations. And we get recordings of actual phone calls where people are not always as guarded. We see the gradual dawning on the higher ups who are the focus of this series as they confront just what they have let themselves get enmeshed in. If you've ever wondered how smart people could possibly find themselves in a cult, this will help you understand those who get taken in by plausible lies fashioned by subtly manipulating psychological truths.
Review of The Vow
