Aum: The Cult at the End of the World throws viewers into a maelstrom of gas-filled subway cars and frantic radio dispatches. On March 20, 1995, sarin gas tore through Tokyo’s Hibiya Line, killing 13 and injuring thousands.
Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto follow that calamity back to its source: Shoko Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyo, which mutated from a meditation circle into a doomsday machine. Premiering at Sundance, the film asks: How did a fringe yoga outfit morph into a global terror network?
And why did its excesses go unchecked for so long? (Hint: blinking often helps when history feels stranger than fiction.) By probing those questions, the documentary reckons with faith’s dark mirror—and whether vigilance can ever catch up to conviction.
Origins and Organizational Evolution
Shoko Asahara began life as Chizuo Matsumoto: a near-blind graduate of unaccredited pharmacy courses who moonlighted as a yoga instructor. In 1984 he launched Aum Shinrikyo,...
Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto follow that calamity back to its source: Shoko Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyo, which mutated from a meditation circle into a doomsday machine. Premiering at Sundance, the film asks: How did a fringe yoga outfit morph into a global terror network?
And why did its excesses go unchecked for so long? (Hint: blinking often helps when history feels stranger than fiction.) By probing those questions, the documentary reckons with faith’s dark mirror—and whether vigilance can ever catch up to conviction.
Origins and Organizational Evolution
Shoko Asahara began life as Chizuo Matsumoto: a near-blind graduate of unaccredited pharmacy courses who moonlighted as a yoga instructor. In 1984 he launched Aum Shinrikyo,...
- 5/20/2025
- by Arash Nahandian
- Gazettely
A generally compelling story with obvious contemporary and global resonances gets an unfortunately dry and surface-level retelling in Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto’s Aum: The Cult at the End of the World, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Cult at the End of the World still offers interesting details, especially at a moment when every other television documentary or docuseries seems to be cult-focused. But, especially in its homestretch, I felt like the film was awash in hastily defended conclusions and bad choices involving at least one key interview subject.
The film begins, in medias res, with the March 20, 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, a horrifying event that left 13 people dead, thousands poisoned and — if you listen to several interview subjects and don’t require corroborating analysis — marked the conclusion of the Japanese economic resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.
The attack was the final escalation for Aum Shinrikyo,...
The Cult at the End of the World still offers interesting details, especially at a moment when every other television documentary or docuseries seems to be cult-focused. But, especially in its homestretch, I felt like the film was awash in hastily defended conclusions and bad choices involving at least one key interview subject.
The film begins, in medias res, with the March 20, 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, a horrifying event that left 13 people dead, thousands poisoned and — if you listen to several interview subjects and don’t require corroborating analysis — marked the conclusion of the Japanese economic resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.
The attack was the final escalation for Aum Shinrikyo,...
- 1/21/2023
- by Daniel Fienberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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