a review of

This reminds me why I love documentaries, and I have seen some duds lately. The score using ambient drones is particularly effective and I really appreciated its tone here. The interviews with the people involved have a weight to them and it doesn't feel sensationalized. Unlike several I have seen lately, it is not full of unrelated b roll. The story is grim as hell and I may have some regrets due to having watched it late at night with an anxiety disorder. I was not familiar with the extent of the atrocities carried out by this cult aside from the most famous one. At first, I wanted more about what drew people in in the first place, more backstory, but it also seems like it's going to be hard to find former members of it to interview who are both still alive (Japan still has the death penalty) and want to show their faces. We just have Joyu, Asahara's right hand man, who is definitely not repentant and still spinning his story. As is said in the doc, the death penalty "blocks the truth" and makes it difficult to learn exactly how this happened. It is clear though that Asahara was extremely charismatic, charming the media and his followers. Seeing Beat Takeshi playfully interviewing Asahara on his talk show was particularly surreal. I guess I just wanted to know more of how people got sucked in and when it started to become sour. It felt like it escalated very quickly for such normal young people to turn this way. I feel so bad for Mr. Kono who both became a suspect and lost his wife to the earlier sarin attack, and for Mr. Sakamoto and his family whose case should have raised red flags if it wasn't for police corruption and incompetence.