Cinemand FilmsFor as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with how cults are shown on screen. The concept of a high-control group and how people become embroiled in them is so fascinating, but also very hard to depict, even in documentaries. Often, these stories will be fictionalized into movies “inspired” by real cults, like how The Master is inspired by Scientology and The Sacrament is inspired by Jonestown. But those movies weren’t trying to show a real-life story. The Leader, Michael Gallagher’s movie about the Heaven’s Gate cult and its shocking mass suicide in 1997, doesn’t shy away from real life. Its deviations from real life only highlight the mindset of its characters, resulting in a deeply affecting, surprisingly graphic film that shines a light on one of the most confusing tragedies in American history. The Leader follows Bonnie Nettles (Vera Farmiga), a housewife and nurse who finds herself drawn to a higher purpose, a desire that is only amplified when she meets Marshall “Herff” Applewhite (Tim Blake Nelson), and together they come to a conclusion: They are actually extraterrestrials, and they have to find others like them and “ascend” to a higher plane. Adopting the names “Bo” and “Peep” and later “Ti” and “Do,” they amassed a number of followers who lived communally under strict roles, including gender-negating bowl cuts and baggy clothes, a vow of celibacy, and the control of everything, including food. Their bodies aren’t their bodies; they are “vehicles,” and eventually they will leave them behind and ascend. We see this through a scene of member Warren (Jim Parsons) donning a visor with attached blinders to go grocery shopping, only to experience a “slippage” when the cashier touches his shoulder. We also see the recruitment process through Michelle (Grace Caroline Currey) and David (Simon Rex), who join on the same night and become “check partners,” only for them to engage in an illicit affair. This slip-up inspires David to request a punishment that had me squirming in my seat, and the fact that it’s paired with footage of a medical procedure to treat Bonnie’s cancer made it all the more graphic — my friend who attended the screening was grateful he didn’t eat beforehand. Days later, images from this scene would flash in my head. This is one that stays with you. That’s really the only graphic scene, which makes it stand out against the scenes of tense press interviews and the eerily accurately reproduced VHS tapes left behind by the group. The third act of this movie is set in 1997, 12 years before the majority of the rest of the movie, and it portrays the events of the mass suicide in unflinching detail, down to the cups of applesauce and asphyxiation. Tim Blake Nelson gives a transformative performance as Marshall “Herff” Applewhite in The Leader. | Cinemand FilmsGallagher, a director best known for his YouTube-adjacent works like Smiley and The Thinning, spent 10 years researching the group, listening to audio tapes and reading cult literature. He even has a personal tie — he was eight when the group’s mass suicide happened in his neighborhood. The effort is clearly there. Often, it’s hard not to feel like you’re watching archive footage, especially since we’re often shown home videos taken by the characters. Herff Applewhite is one of those mythical figures who feels larger than life, but luckily, Tim Blake Nelson is just as boisterous. Nelson belts as Applewhite, a former opera singer, leads the group through a singalong, but he also stares with complete disbelief when a doctor tells Bonnie that her cancer is terminal. Gallagher cites Tim Burton’s Ed Wood as an inspiration, and there is a big similarity: both are eccentric figures who are set on creating something of their own, even when everyone is telling them it’s not possible.It all builds to the finale, which the film approaches with the appropriate level of dread. Shown without score, we see the methodical process of the tragedy, including the wordless “helpers” who volunteered to help with the “ascension.” In the movie’s final moments, we see David help Herff “shed his vehicle,” which leads the story to its big finale, a divisive ending that takes after Saint Maud’s fabulous final jump scare and turns it into a reminder of the falseness of the group’s whole delusion. A cult biopic needs to have the right balance of humanity and reality, and this movie threads that needle over and over again. It’s a wrenching, deeply personal watch — and I’ll never watch it again. But that’s actually a point in its favor: each moment is so visceral and vivid, they’re burned in my mind forever.The Leader screened October 24 at the Virginia Film Festival. It does not yet have a distributor.