Listen to Jeffs’s voice, in the recorded sermons included in the film: His is the gentle monotone of the hypnotist. “The more afraid, the more threatened … the more they were bound to him.” So, how in hell was this man, who was told from a very young age that he was a prophet, able to have this kind of hold over people? True, he inherited an already-ignorant flock. As with Scientology, there was a sadist edge to it all, too: “He hated people to be happy,” we’re told. history they taught the history of the church. Offenses included interacting with people not in the FLDS, or looking at outside media. Jeffs preached about the end times, and he made sure that his congregants knew that if they strayed in the slightest, they would be damned. What she finds, of course, is a combination of ignorance, eerie charisma, and fear. (The film is based partly on Brower’s own book Prophet’s Prey, published in 2011.)īerg also explores the mind-set that allows people to be controlled by someone like this. Rather, Prophet’s Prey interweaves the rise of the FLDS and of Jeffs himself, as well as the years-long investigation into the church conducted by journalist Jon Krakauer and private investigator Sam Brower. But that aspect of Jeffs’s world isn’t the primary focus here. (Apparently, Warren Jeffs still has real control over the church, even though he’s serving a life sentence.) This isn’t the first film that Berg has made to deal with the nexus of sexual abuse and political/professional/religious power: Her 2006 film Deliver Us from Evil looked at rape in the Catholic Church, and more recently she made An Open Secret, which tackled the molestation of child actors in Hollywood. Those revelations come from one of his victims – a nephew whose father, Warren’s brother Lyle, now nominally runs the church. Jeffs was more than a false prophet and a tyrant he was also a rapist who sexually abused young girls and boys at his church and at the school he founded and ran. Do you split up these families, or do you let them go about living their highly sheltered lives in their church - even though much of that church was built by a charlatan and a criminal? Much of the debate at the time was about what to do with Jeffs’s dozens upon dozens of spouses and children after his arrest. Jeffs, as some may recall, was all over national headlines in 20 when the FBI placed him on its 10 Most Wanted List and then arrested him, revealing to the world his twisted ideology and his army of brainwashed wives (as many as 70 or so). And now, Amy Berg’s new film looks at the rise and fall of cult leader Warren Jeffs, the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a splinter group that felt the Mormon Church’s official renunciation of polygamy back in 1890 constituted a betrayal of its principles. I highly recommend it, but beware, its a tough subject.It’s been a big year for documentaries about cults, cranks, and crazies, with the Scientology exposé Going Clear a few months ago and white-supremacist-takeover thriller Welcome to Leith just last week. This so called prophet created this world and the films sets out to expose him and the unjust behavior of certain individuals. The film is unflinching look at the most depraved of human behavior, child brides, child molestation, brain washing, and much more. The film also follows the admittedly interesting history of the community and what lead the child molester in question to do what he did. A world full of strict rules, paranoia, police working under the eye of religious figure, and a world truly stuck in time. The film doesn't just follow the trial of the convicted "prophet", it follows the community in which the fundamentalist group rules. This swirling tale of both religious devotion and the exploitation of the respect and obedience of religious figures, I never once lost interest, and was even trying to do some paperwork, but couldn't because it was so damn eye-catching, I found myself fascinated by what would cause a man to do such evil things on a community level. It delves deep into a bizarre, abhorrent, yet fascinating world of polygamy, religious extremism, underage marriage, and molestation on a factory level. Within the first 2 minutes this documentary presents you with one of the most disgusting and heinous things you will ever hear, it grabs you by the throat and never lets go, about an infamous sexual assault scandal regarding the leader and self-proclaimed prophet of a fundamentalist Mormon group.
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