Last night I watched this movie, "Savage Messiah", about a real cult commune in Canada in the late 80's. I didn't know what it was about to start with, but something was ringing alarms in my mind as the story progressed.
They looked like a harmless hippie commune, which I am pretty open minded about since I live in Oregon and not too far from Eugene, where there is quite a history of counter-culture activities. Here in Oregon we are pretty open minded about self-sufficient living, natural foods, yogurt, and wood-stoves.
But as I said earlier, as the movie progressed my alarm bells went off and I realized that this was more than just people getting back to nature. I began to see through this facade and how the member's weird ideas of never dying and salvation where very parallel to my own experiences as a JW. Their leader was a very charismatic man who attracted many women followers. The lead actress wasn't charmed however, and later on in the story we find out why she was immune to his spell. The subsequent story of the degradation of the children, and the depiction of the abuse of the women in this cult was extremely disturbing to me, even for Halloween. I don't want to give too much away, but suggest that this might be a good movie to watch to see an example of how you can take people out of the cult overnight, but you can't take the cult out of the people as quickly, if ever.
Has anyone else seen this film?
Tammy