Love Has Won

Sporadically interesting but it didn't really make any effort to tell me why I should care or why this is even interesting. Its almost completely devoid of insights. The cult was only around a dozen people at most, so its hard to argue it had any wider impact. 'Heaven's Gate: Cult of Cults' made a pretty good effort to delve into the psychology of cult members and why people join cults. There's nothing of that here. Much of it was just watching a sad collective of drug and alcohol addicts getting intoxicated and talking gibberish, with a leader who's clearly suffering from a mental illness. Am I supposed to be entertained by this? Clearly the idea is that crazy automatically means interesting. But without analysis the spectacle verges on voyeurism. There definitely should have been more non-LHW voices to give a more grounded and critical perspective.

Just watched this documentary. I don't think I've ever seen a more gullible, imbecilic group of people in my life. To blindly follow a childish, narcissistic, alcoholic, believing all the time that she is the embodiment of God on earth. Well, what can I say there's a sucker born every moment. Compassion is one thing. I have that for all of them. They have obviously had very messed up lives, but the levels of ignorance and sheer naïveté are just astonishing here. No one featured on this documentary should ever ever ever reproduce and yet several of them did, and, of course Abandoned their children.

I've seen videos on this cult before, but once this came out I hunkered down to binge the whole thing. Love Has Won is a deep dive into the beginning of the cult and its growth, with interviews with (former?) members of the cult sharing their views and experiences.

Honestly, I think this is one of the better cult documentaries I've seen. For once, there isn't insane child abuse, but what went on is still undeniably wild! The first episode was a bit slow for my tastes, but the last two were shocking. Seeing how deep the delusions of LHW run, hearing their beliefs, and the sheer amount of substance abuse going on has me baffled as to how they functioned for so long. I think this might be a great example of spiritual psychosis leading to the exploitation of other, more vulnerable people.

Highly recommend if you have an interest in this sort of thing.

This was definitely a strange documentary, but it was interesting, often funny (unintentionally), and even sad at times. But when a wasted Mother God asked for Chicken Parmesan and was given meatballs, one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a documentary happened. I can't really repeat it because of all the cussing, but her delivery of "Chicken Paremsan! I love meatballs.... but that's not what I wanted! CHICKEN PARMESAN!.... and then something along the lines of "I get dumber every moment I'm around you stupid people" with much more cussing and swearing.... I mean, seriously? If this was real, who would actually think this was a God-like figure who just drank all day long and swore all the time??? If you like bizarre, this one is for you.

There were several times I had to ask, is this a spoof series? Like 'This is Spinal Tap' for cults. It's sad that these are real people living life so poorly.

But, somehow, it's compelling to watch. How? How do people get this lost? I hope the rest of the series takes a dive into these lives (rather than the crazy clips) and how they became so broken. Trauma, obviously, but it's got to be more than just that.

As a parent it's a nightmare to think your kids might end up so astray in their lives. We'd like to think we'll be there for them and have given them enough tools. Sometimes it's still not enough. It's easy to call these people absolute morons. Outliers. Anomalies. Freaks. Is that in any way helpful, or preventative? I hope the rest of the series veers a little more in that direction.