Popular reviews

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  Review by Chris ★★★★ 1

  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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  Review by Chris Genro ★★★★½

  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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  Review by Hershal ★★★★

  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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  Review by valcal ★★

  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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  Review by Travis Mason ★★

  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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  Review by Steve Austin-Crawford ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  The lifting of a Maori curse, or mataku, from Janet Moses, her death apparently caused by her family in 2007 and subsequent court case caused a huge stir in both the media and the law of New Zealand at the time. David Stubbs’ powerfully intense docu-drama attempts to probe the heart of the family crisis and investigates what drove their faith in drowning their own daughter via religious cleansing in the family home.

  Never sensationalising, as much of the media was wont to do during the coverage of the case, Stubbs takes the court transcribed testimony directly from those who were a part of the events and reconstructs them with an clean storyteller’s eye for tension and raising of stakes.…

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  Review by Tess ★★★

  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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  Review by Dom ★★★

  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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  Review by Reasonwasout ★★★½ 2

  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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  Review by cori ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  i’m sorry but i have no sympathy for the family, at least the leaders. especially after they started torturing the teenage girl. they should’ve gone to jail.

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  Review by SuzezMovies ★★

  Why am I watching such depressing stuff? Incredibly sad story that I knew nothing about before seeing this. But wow this has me so heartbroken for all involved and especially the young woman who lost her life to a loving, well intentioned family trying desperately to help her. I’m not sure what I was expecting going into this, but it wasn’t what I got. I guess the filming of this tragic story in this way was alright, but I ultimately felt it was disingenuous for such a harrowing, deeply personal family trauma with profound cultural and social biases. Not sure if I would recommend—this will make you extremely sad for humans and our incomprehensible degree of ignorance.

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  Review by Aukai Ligairi ★★★★½

  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…