The Following: The Complete First Season – Out Monday – Cults on Screen
There are many qualities that come to mind when thinking of a good leader such as honesty, bravery, and perseverance. Not all leaders are good though. In The Following, escaped serial killer Joe Carroll shows the qualities of the other end of the spectrum: manipulation and persuasion. He uses these skills to influence people and start his own cult of killers.
Cults are found in all forms throughout film and TV. These cults are formed on common beliefs and form unbreakable bonds between their members. In The Following Joe Carroll is able to manipulate others to join him on his killing spree, forming a cult that makes the work of the FBI agent, played by Kevin Bacon, extremely more difficult.
Lock your doors and don’t trust anyone, as The Following: The complete First Season arrives on Blu-ray and DVD on 2 December 2013...
| One of the most famous cult movies ever is Rosemary’s Baby, released in 1968. Directed by the famous Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s baby follows Rosemary Woodhouse and her ongoing interaction with a satanic cult. Rosemary and her husband Guy move to a New York City apartment and befriend their neighbours the Castevets. The two have dinner and Guy becomes intrigued by them. After a series of fortunate events for the couple they decide to try and conceive. Rosemary is plagued by a dream of a demonic figure and wakes up with scratches on her body. She does become pregnant and the Castevets and her husband play an unusually important role during her pregnancy controlling what doctor she visits and her diet. Rosemary later learns that the Castevets are part of a satanic cult are her husband Guy has been manipulated by the influential couple to cooperate with them. Rosemary finds out to late and goes into labour. She is at first told that the baby is dead but then hears him crying from the other room. She learns that the baby is a spawn of the devil and a baby of the cult. |
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| Eyes Wide Shut is a classic cult movie that stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Bill, played by Cruise, learns of his wife’s recent indiscretions and decides to go out for a night on his own. After meeting up with several women including a female friend who confesses her love for him and a prostitute he meets up with his friend Nick who has a job playing piano at a party that night. Bill is intrigued by the details of the party which include a password, mask and costume and decides to go himself. This plan ends in disaster when Bill ends up at a party hosted by a crazy sexual cult. Bill is found to be an outsider by the leader and puts another girl at the party and his friend Nick at risk. Bill sees the next morning that the girl who tried to protect him had been found dead. Bill sees the insane and sick rituals of this cult and returns home to his wife begging for forgiveness. |
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| The next famous cult movie is Fight Club starring Brad Pitt. The movie tells the story of an unnamed man suffering from insomnia who finds solace in attending support groups for people with worse ailments. The narrator becomes friends with a man named Tyler Durden and they start a fight club one night out at the bar. Tyler begins to take these fight clubs to a new level and he gains a cult-like following. This new cult, or known as “Project Mayhem”, begins to form values against the current popular trends of the time like “corporate culture”. As the film progresses, the narrator is diagnosed with dissociative personality disorder and finds that he and Tyler are actually the same person and Tyler has a plot using the cult to blow up credit card companies. As the narrator tries to stop him he ends up killing Tyler in the struggle by shooting himself in the mouth. |
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| The Following Perhaps none of these magnetic cult leaders has a more sinister final plan than Joe Carroll of The Following. He’s escaped from prison to take the life of the man who put him there, FBI Agent Ryan Hardy. But Hardy’s blood is not likely to be the only person’s to be shed. While incarcerated, Carroll used his magnetic personality to attract fellow inmates to his cause, managing to convince them that he can fill a void in their lives. Once he reels them in, they are willing to do anything from kidnapping to murder and even self-sacrifice in order to allow Carroll to fulfil his dastardly aims. |
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| Released in 2011, Martha Marcy May Marlene shows the repercussions that a cult has on a person who tries to return to the normality of everyday life. Martha had been living in a cult in the Catskills and decides to leave and go live with her sister and her husband against the cult’s wishes. While living with her sister Martha experiences extreme fits of paranoia and anxiety. Flashbacks provide insight into Martha’s life with the cult including when the cult leader Patrick raped her for the first time and seeing another member of the cult kill an innocent man. Her sister and husband continue to notice Martha’s abnormal behaviour like swimming in the lake naked and agree she needs help. Her anxiety hits an all time high when Martha thinks she sees one of the cult members at a party in her sister’s home. The next day Martha gets into the car with her sister to be taken to the mental health facility, but as she drives on she sees a man who she believed to be watching her earlier get into a car behind them and start following them as the movie ends leaving audiences to wonder the outcome. |
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| One popular reason for people joining a cult is the need to belong to something. When someone is alone with no family, friends, or purpose they are vulnerable and easily manipulated. In the movie The Master, Freddie Quell is that man who is looking for belonging and finds it with Lancaster Dodd. Dodd is the leader of a philosophical cult called “The Cause”. Quell is introduced to the movement by Dodd and travels with the group spreading the practice. Plagued by his alcoholism and violent demeanour, Quell begins to get him into trouble with people who question the movement and members of the cult as well. He eventually lands himself in prison with Dodd and has a mental breakdown questioning everything he has been doing with the cult. After they get out of jail, Freddie stays with the group for a little bit longer but ultimately leaves to pursue the love of his life who he later finds out got married. Alone again, Quell has a vision of Dodd and goes to visit him in England and is given the ultimatum to fully devote himself to the cult or leave forever. |
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| One important quality about a cult is the common thread that keeps them united. In the movie The Village that common thread is the grief from the outside world. Throughout the movie the children of the village are told to never enter the woods because the creatures that live within are dangerous and unknown. Two young members, Lucius and Ivy, fall in love and plan to get married. Lucius is stabbed by a jealous member of the village and Ivy, the daughter of the leader of the village, must venture through the woods for medical supplies. The leader of the village explains to his daughter that the elders of the village made up the idea of creatures to keep the young people of the village from leaving. Ivy makes it through the woods and is told by a park ranger that the village is actually a cult made by her father after he lost his own father. All of the people within the village met during grief counselling and decided to live there together in a cult with their secrets of past lives in boxes kept away. |
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| Win The Following: The Complete First Season on DVD Don’t miss out as THE FOLLOWING: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON arrives on Blu-ray and DVD on 2 December 2013.
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