A generally compelling story with obvious contemporary and global resonances gets an unfortunately dry and surface-level retelling in Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto’s Aum: The Cult at the End of the World, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Cult at the End of the World still offers interesting details, especially at a moment when every other television documentary or docuseries seems to be cult-focused. But, especially in its homestretch, I felt like the film was awash in hastily defended conclusions and bad choices involving at least one key interview subject.
The film begins, in medias res, with the March 20, 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, a horrifying event that left 13 people dead, thousands poisoned and — if you listen to several interview subjects and don’t require corroborating analysis — marked the conclusion of the Japanese economic resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.
The attack was the final escalation for Aum Shinrikyo,...
The Cult at the End of the World still offers interesting details, especially at a moment when every other television documentary or docuseries seems to be cult-focused. But, especially in its homestretch, I felt like the film was awash in hastily defended conclusions and bad choices involving at least one key interview subject.
The film begins, in medias res, with the March 20, 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, a horrifying event that left 13 people dead, thousands poisoned and — if you listen to several interview subjects and don’t require corroborating analysis — marked the conclusion of the Japanese economic resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.
The attack was the final escalation for Aum Shinrikyo,...
- 1/21/2023
- by Daniel Fienberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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