The "Heaven's Gate" Cult... a fascinating subject, that due to the filmmakers/creators, have turned this into one long bore fest.
First of all, 4 hours? It would have improved at least 50%, had they cut this thing in half. There is SO much extraneous time wasted on "talking heads" interviews of family members saying a whole lot of nothing. Sure, some is okay, gotta have that. But it's just too damn much. And even some of the ex-cult member footage, it felt like it was there because they needed 4 hours for CNN or HBO.
Speaking of ex-cult members, the one who's voice is messed up: sometimes they have subtitles for him, and sometimes they didn't. Why? WTF? He's difficult to understand, there should have been subtitles for this dude every time he speaks. This just shows a sloppiness to me on how this doc was made.
And what's with these looney animations that run through the series. I mean, they are weird. Out of place. They don't belong in a documentary like this. Who's "brilliant" idea was it to put this stuff in here? The director's? The producers'? Lame, lame, lame.
Given the subject matter, this could have been a really good doc. So either they didn't have enough home movie footage from the cult members, and other interesting behind-the-scenes footage, or, the filmmaker(s) don't know how to craft a good doc. This wasn't even half as good as "The Vow" (another doc series about another cult). What a shame.
First of all, 4 hours? It would have improved at least 50%, had they cut this thing in half. There is SO much extraneous time wasted on "talking heads" interviews of family members saying a whole lot of nothing. Sure, some is okay, gotta have that. But it's just too damn much. And even some of the ex-cult member footage, it felt like it was there because they needed 4 hours for CNN or HBO.
Speaking of ex-cult members, the one who's voice is messed up: sometimes they have subtitles for him, and sometimes they didn't. Why? WTF? He's difficult to understand, there should have been subtitles for this dude every time he speaks. This just shows a sloppiness to me on how this doc was made.
And what's with these looney animations that run through the series. I mean, they are weird. Out of place. They don't belong in a documentary like this. Who's "brilliant" idea was it to put this stuff in here? The director's? The producers'? Lame, lame, lame.
Given the subject matter, this could have been a really good doc. So either they didn't have enough home movie footage from the cult members, and other interesting behind-the-scenes footage, or, the filmmaker(s) don't know how to craft a good doc. This wasn't even half as good as "The Vow" (another doc series about another cult). What a shame.