Heaven’s Gate Horror ‘The Leader’ Never Feels Satisfying, But Maybe That’s the Point [Tribeca Review]

For the past several decades, cults have continued to fascinate us. Most of the cult media tends to be true crime programming, touching on the psychosexual abuse, hard physical labor, and white-collar crime that seem to always be a throughline with these collectives. The documentarians profiling them will put anything and anyone: The Christian influencers holding up megachurches, the hot yoga community, Black vegans, anti-vax homesteaders, and so on. 

But cults don’t get the feature film treatment as often. The Leader shows the genesis of the cult of Heaven’s Gate through the lens of an intense but platonic love story between Bonnie Lu Nettles (Vera Farmiga of The Conjuring) and Marshall “Herff” Applewhite (Tim Blake Nelson). The film feels like a taxi ride from hell — with abrupt twists and turns in tone, cinematography, and in whether the absurdism is played for laughs. 

At times, this melange of elements feels disjointed, but maybe that’s the point. I can’t imagine that being involved with something as all-consuming as a cult feels good. Having watched dozens of cult documentaries, including retellings of the rise and fall of Mother God, NXIVM  and the Church of Scientology, it’s easy for me to imagine how euphoric and disorienting it feels to have left everything behind to pursue an emerging religion.

Still, as someone whose wheelhouse is horror, I was left wanting more of the found-footage moments. The film’s framing is that Bonnie Lu is being interviewed by a smarmy journalist, and she is defensively recounting the birth of Heaven’s Gate in her own words. Seeing the close-ups of the cassette recorder echoed Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, but the voiceovers felt more like narrative architecture than a device for chilling effect.

I felt most creeped out during The Leader when there were snippets of culty B-roll or when we got to see the confessional interviews taped by Heaven’s Gate members to prepare for the ascension, a.k.a. mass suicide. If you’re looking for a V/H/S-style scare, The Leader will probably not be your cup of . But if you’re looking for a comedy that’s funny the wayYorgos Lanthimos is funny? Or if you’d like to see a movie about a messy gay man and his straight bestie taking their co-dependent relationship way too far? You’re going to enjoy this movie, genuinely.