‘AUM: The Cult at the End of the World’ Review: A Creepy But Cursory Doc Charting the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Doomsday Cult

The success of long-format cult-exposé documentaries like HBO’s “The Vow” and Netflix’s “Wild Wild Country” has given the cult-curious an appetite for the kind of chain-link explosion rhythms that only serials can supply. We’re primed, one might even say programmed, to expect the smallest new kink on even the oddest tangent to get ample screentime, and broader thematic arcs and major personalities to have multiple episodes over which to develop. Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto’s “Aum: The Cult At The End of The World” certainly acknowledges that there is a whole season’s worth of material in the story of the… Read Full Article