A great idea for a show - the kidnapping and reprogramming of cult members - The Sect is so badly constructed, so awkward in its exposition (with horribly clumsy flashbacks and 'visions') that it's almost impossible to watch without laughing, or groaning.
I struggled to persevere through the first episode, wanting to see an all-too rare contemporary Russian show on such an interesting subject (sects are particularly common in Russia at this time, as it happens); but the crude stereotyping, hammy acting and truly terrible dialogue (in English translation, at least) was as much as I could take.
Before the end of the first episode, the kidnapped cult member undergoing 'rehabilitation' in a house in the woods manages to escape out of the window. Chased by her benevolent kidnappers she doesn't get far, especially when their leader inexplicably and brutally drop-kicks her in the stomach to detain her. If this is supposed to show his dark and brutish character, what does the scene say about the others who do not complain or seem particularly disturbed, not even the story's central character - an ex-sect member herself, hired now as a nurse to help effect the 'rehabilitation' - who shows more caring to the unprovoked assailant (later drunken and spouting existential nonsense) than to his hapless, vulnerable female victim?
With character behaviour as inconsistent as this, one gets the sense that all the surprises of The Sect are going to relate to the bad writing rather than any spark of originality in the plotting.
