Filmmaker Will Allen documents the time he spent with the Buddhafield, a Los Angeles spiritual group to give us an inside look at the West Hollywood cult formed by a charismatic teacher in the 1980s that eventually imploded.
Like watching a takedown of Hitler by a disillusioned Leni Reifenstahl, what emerges is one of the decade's strangest and most unsettling documentaries, especially given its as-yet-unwritten ending.
Allen's gentle compassion for his fellow cult survivors is understandable, but is ultimately unsatisfying. Still, for fans of cult documentaries, Holy Hell is worth it for its insider footage alone.
Tries to get across the ambiance of a community under the sway of a weirdly magnetic figure, but inevitably it comes up short; nonetheless the taste that it provides is chilling.
The foundation is there for a good documentary to happen, but the fact that amateurish filmmaking got in the way of the story really does a major disservice to the overall story.
"Holy Hell" should have dug a lot deeper and told its story with a lot more finesse. What happened? Maybe, after all these years, Allen was still too close to his subject?
