By Alex Purnell. Director Luke Ibbeston’s feature debut is funny yet disturbing, a whimsical mockumentary with a distinctly British charm.

Reminiscent of Louis Theroux’s The Most Hated Family in America (2007), Cult explores a strange fictional 90’s cult with all the cultish bells and whistles.

Following a camera crew into the depths of a religious compound known as F.A.T.E, or Friends At The End, who believe that a comet that flies by the earth every 40 years is in fact a spaceship manned by extraterrestrial beings. F.A.T.E’s members consist of a medley of quirky, enrobed individuals, including Manaus (Althyr Pivatto), who took a dodgy LSD tab and somehow ended up on the compound, Beck (Marriane Chase), the groups disturbed cook hell-bent on sacrifice, and Comet (Calvin Crawley), the excitable, innocent and childlike centrepiece of the film who falls in love with new recruit Rachel (Elizabeth Sankey), who the cult pick up from a local rehab centre. With numbers waning, crops dying and the end of the world scheduled in a couple of days, we watch F.A.T.E’s final few months from the perspective of the bewildered camera crew.

Cult’s mockumentary style works wonders, it’s fantastically absurd black-comedy is brilliantly entertaining, poking at fun at the wackiness of real-life religions, yet also posing deep questions about the public understanding of often misunderstood cult members.

However, the film leans too into its low-budget style, in which some questionable casting options and location decisions more or less break the documentary-style spell.

Moreover, in a jarring change of pace and tone, the final few scenes of the flick change to present-day with a more sombre retrospective of the cult, seemingly out of place in this otherwise playful comedy.

Cult is fun, charismatic and at points, dead strange. Brimming with cultish stereotypes and unusual song parodies, its unique take on a typically considered depressing subject matter is a breath of fresh air.

---

We hope you're enjoying BRWC. You should check us out on our social channels, subscribe to our newsletter, and tell your friends. BRWC is short for battleroyalewithcheese.

---

Trending on BRWC:

---

Cool Posts From Around the Web:

---

---