![]() Once in power, and having moved the community to a beautiful but remote area on the border between Utah and Arizona (“Warren has really great taste in real estate,” Krakauer dryly notes) Jeffs reinforced the community’s isolation from the modern world in order to exert maximum control over his flock. Testimony from members of his own, huge extended family who have left the group or been expelled as apostates recount how Jeffs abused scores of children of both sexes (even members of his own family) when he was simply the principal at the local school, Alta Academy in Salt Lake City. Surely, producing partner Imagine Entertainment must be contemplating a dramatized version of their joint-story already.Īfter a simplified animated opening sequence brings viewers up to speed with a potted history of Mormonism and how the FLDS was founded by a sect within the Church of Latter-Day Saints that refused to give up on polygamy, the film plunges into the story of Jeffs and how he manipulated his way to the top of the offshoot church. The twosome make engaging if contrasting guides through the complex story, with Krakauer coming across as the wisecracking, cerebral counterpoint to Brower’s burly man-of-action. Both Brower and Krakauer are heavily here featured as witnesses – the film argues, in fact, that they played a major role in Jeffs’ capture– and the men take consulting producer and executive producer credits respectively. Once again like Going Clear, which draws extensively from a book by its anchor interviewee Lawrence Wright, Prophet’s Prey takes its title from and stands on the shoulders of research done for a book of the same name by private investigator Sam Brower, with considerable additional input from journalist Jon Krakauer’s bestseller, Under the Banner of Heaven. At the time of writing, the broadcast date on US network Showtime remained unconfirmed since there are plans to release the film theatrically first. In fact, in strictly cinematic terms, Berg’s more stylized effort is in some ways the more interesting and striking work, if for no other reason than its material is less well known. ![]() 'Past Lives' Director Celine Song on How She Landed Her Directorial Debut: "I Knew The Things That Only I Could Know' Like Gibney’s film, Berg’s account of the child abuse cases that led to the imprisonment of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), doesn’t reveal much that hasn’t already been in the news or written up in books, but it does provide a comprehensive, disturbing and utterly fascinating historical overview. It's disturbing viewing, but compulsively watchable, and highly recommended.Maybe it was just an accident, or maybe there was a concerted strategy afoot, but something in the universe aligned to ensure that Sundance this year was able to program two very strong documentaries about two similarly sinister religious cults: director Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and now Amy Berg’s Prophet’s Prey. While it is immensely vindicating to see the man locked up, the movie paints the picture of a much larger problem. Jeffs was jailed for life, but he is still leading the church from his cell, and the movie's ending makes you wonder how many more like him there are out there. ![]() The voice must sound to the flock like the voice of God when it comes over a loudspeaker to us it is the voice of a psychopath. Jeffs is heard intoning Bible verse with his alien, emotionless voice, that becomes all too familiar by the movie's end: this voice, and his adeptness with scripture, are the two weapons he uses in keeping people at bay so that he can carry out his molestation. There is a particularly disturbing recording of Jeffs' voice as he speaks to a young girl, presumably during or after a rape. We hear from victims both male and female, and the private detective who became obsessed with seeing Jeffs behind bars. Using interviews with people involved in the church and those who saw it from the outside, the documentary makes a case against Warren Jeffs, the "prophet" who headed his church in a compound away from the world's eyes - a distance that allowed him to take many young girls as wives. "Prophet's Prey" is a riveting, disturbing documentary about systemic abuse in an FLDS - Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints - organization. Reviewed by jadavix 9 / 10 Highly recommended
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