HBO's Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults shows the humanity of the Heaven's Gate cult members

Decider

The four-part docuseries offers an alternative to the mockery that followed the death of the 39 Heaven's Gate victims in 1997. "Heaven’s Gate is one of those rare national tragedies that’s never treated as such. Shortly after the UFO cult first made headlines, it was mocked," says Kayla Cobb. "Even when that same cult led to the deaths of a believed 39 victims, the organization and its members have been the center of snarky one-liners and ridiculous sketches. It’s that history of ridicule that Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults dissects the most. The four-part docuseries serves as a thorough dive into this doomed religious movement, but more than that it corrects the notion that the members of this cult deserve mockery." Cobb adds: "That’s what Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults reminds viewers of, time and time again. The members of this organization weren’t unhinged individuals. They were smart men and women from good families. Many of them wanted to make the world a better place. It was their intelligence, curious natures, and interest in New Age remedies that led them to Do and Ti, Bonnie Nettles. Once they were in the grasps of Applewhite and Nettles, it wasn’t long before they were slowly stripped of their individuality and ability to think for themselves."

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• The dullness of the first two hours is meant to ground the outlandishness of the last two and it largely works: "Arriving in a cult-obsessed media landscape that may just be grateful for something that isn't NXIVM-related, HBO Max's Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults is sure to initially frustrate and possibly even bore viewers with an appetite for the salacious," says Daniel Fienberg. "This is probably the intention of prolific documentarian Clay Tweel (The Innocent Man, Finders Keepers), who spends the first two parts of the four-part series emphasizing all of the ways Heaven's Gate was, relatively speaking, 'normal' or at least 'typical' for the particular moment of its founding. It's an interesting de-stigmatizing process, but one likely to cause many viewers to skip ahead to the third and fourth episodes, where the sensationalistic stuff is lurking."
• Where Heaven's Gate: Cult of Cults falls a little short is in its explanation or exploration of the appeal of its charisma-challenged leaders