Synopsis
This impressive doco disperses the fog of shame and sensationalism to shed light on the tragedy that made international headlines in 2007 when a young Wainuiomata woman died during a mākutu lifting.
Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses
2015 Directed by David Stubbs
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I remember when the story of Janet Moses's death first broke here in New Zealand. The reaction was one of complete shock, I was shocked, my parents were shocked, my friends were shocked, and everyone was so quick to demonise Janet's family we never stopped to think "How did this happen?" How deep does a family's faith have to be to accidentally kill one of their own out of love? This fascinating docudrama endeavours to answer that question.
What seemingly starts as fairly standard docudrama very quickly becomes a fascinating study of family, faith, and spiritualism. Particularly, how deeply our beliefs drive us in our actions.
Something particularly harrowing in this documentary is witnessing the Moses family becoming increasingly isolated…
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A heartbreaking and fascinating look at a terrible tragedy that never sensationalizes and goes to get lengths to present both sides of the argument. A very sad film where you feel terrible for everyone involved.
It's easy to judge others when we are not in the same situation but in this case I felt it was a mix of deeply held religious beliefs, hysteria and group mentality caused the death of this young woman. To make matters worse it almost cost the life of her daughter as well.
I've always found films that tackle the clash between cultures or old world spiritual beliefs vs modern science to be extremely interesting and this is no exception. 4.5/5 stars.
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This is a tough movie to watch. And it's even tougher if you have any experience dealing with someone in the throes of a full-on psychotic breakdown. I'm not a spirtiual person, I don't believe in possession or demons. But plenty of people do. And this docudrama consisting of recreations of the actual events combined with real life accounts from some of the people who dealt with the aftermath paints a sobering but fair portrait of a group of people who wanted to help but who fell victim to a group madness that led them to do anything but. I felt crushed when it was all over. That's powerful filmmaking.
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I think the story itself is interesting but the format of this documentary sucked. I found it slow and boring. I was not a fan of the reenactment interview being used as a major way to tell the story. I feel like I didn't really get to know who the victim or perpetrators were before the incident. I also feel like the vague format resulted in me not even realizing there was two victims in the incident pretty late into the story.
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First of all: what the actual fuck?
Second of all: I can't stand when documentaries are based mostly on reenactments. It's so anticlimactic. It kills the whole "this is a real life thing" factor and instead makes it feel silly and not serious (imo).
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These kinds of cult killings really turns my stomach. This is not cultural differences, this is pure and plain brainwashing with no logic considered whatsoever.
Får ont i magen av såna här sektmord. Detta är inte kulturella skillnader, detta är ren och skär hjärntvätt och logik ut genom fönstret.
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I kind of feel bad every time I put on a documentary in the background while I play ps4 and it turns out to be a harrowing story of how a family was ripped apart. I thought it'd be cool exorcism shit.
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I don't normally watch documentaries with a heavy emphasis on re-enactments. The end product is usually just so wooden or stupidly overdramatic that it loses the plot in the interim.
This was well performed, and truly terrifying, an aspect that it probably would've lost if it had simply been talking head interviews.
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If you thought Once Were Warriors was a bleak look at contemporary Māori life, you’ve seen nothing yet. Here, a religiously devout—yet woefully culturally uneducated—family attempt to uplift a loved one from a mākutu curse, the closest Māori equivalent to a Catholic exorcism.
The story is framed as a documentary, but is told primarily via re-enactment. So much re-enactment that the documentary elements felt almost superfluous at a certain point. One likely could have made two separate films from the materials, both narrative and non-fiction. Still, this hybrid is mostly effective. The closest cinematic cousin I could compare the form to is Richard Linklater’s Bernie.
On the documentary side, I feel like the biggest failing was not including more insight…
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the fact that this happened so recently makes me so glad i wasn't around 100 years ago. my god. docudrama is powerful, isn't it? i definitely wanted to bawl my eyes out this early in the morning.