Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults Early Review

Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults, the newest docu-series from HBO Max, is both an exercise in precise storytelling that spans several decades and how herd mentality pushed past the point of no return can result in catastrophic consequences. It’s equal parts a cautionary tale as well as a human study that seeks to examine and dissect the difference between a religious sub-sect as opposed to personal ideals imposed upon malleable personalities.

Most people that are aware of the Heaven’s Gate cult know about its strange philosophy centered around the member’s Earthly bodies, or vehicles, left behind as they assume their true form of aliens as they ascend to The Next Level and are whisked away to the Kingdom of God via a spaceship. While many are surely aware of the mass suicide the group is most notable for, they may not know about the slow and methodical march to this end that the members undertook for twenty-plus years. The Cult of Cults does an excellent job of streamlining the group’s story as it spans from 1976 to 1997 and focuses on its iconic leaders, Ti and Do (aka Herf Applewhite), and their dedicated following as they venture from a small group of missing persons into a fringe religious following who commits the largest suicide on U.S. soil. The four-part docu-series not only dives deep into the ideologies of Ti and Do but across its four segments holds a magnifying glass up to its members who are all from prominent and well-managed backgrounds that end up willingly leaving their families and livelihood behind with little to no contact.

Possibly the doc’s greatest strength is that many of the Heaven’s Gate members are still alive to provide unprecedented access and understanding from within. Unlike other cults, members were free to come and go as they please and many often did. These interviews prove invaluable as they are strategically placed in-between archival and never-before-seen footage of Heaven’s Gate and help provide a better understand and context to the cult’s belief system and methodology. Without these, the docu-series would easily fail as many of its survivors are still picking up the pieces within their individual lives two decades later. Everyone will be drawn to this series at first because of its ending, which is spoken of with both reverence and incredulity, but The Cult of Cults expertly establishes that the most important aspect of this story is the journey because one man’s hubris ultimately leads to an inevitable conclusion that was completely preventable.

The lasting impact of something that many saw as an insignificant and trivial group has had a ripple effect across time that still bears emotional scars for those that managed to not be present in that fateful house in San Diego in March of 1997. Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults not only displays those scars but leads the viewer by the hand as it presents the case of why this small religious group whose monastic practices were strange yet harmless never needed to be extinguished in such a manner as it was.

still courtesy of HBO Max

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