Netflix
Mormonism has taken a extreme beating as of late—at the least on the small display screen, courtesy of Jared Hess’ 2021 Homicide Among the many Mormons and Andrew Garfield and Dustin Lance Black’s current Underneath the Banner of Heaven, and it suffers one other brutal blow with Hold Candy: Pray and Obey, director Rachel Dretzin’s outrage-inducing four-part Netflix docuseries (June 8) about Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Like so many cultists earlier than him, Jeffs fancied himself the mouthpiece for God, and he used his supposedly divine standing to create and management an insular polygamous neighborhood predicated on the subjugation, enslavement, and abuse of girls. That wasn’t sufficient for Jeffs, nonetheless, whose most heinous crime needed to do with youngsters—particularly, the numerous underage women whom he married off to adults, or tied the knot with himself, so that they might be repeatedly raped and impregnated.
Jeffs is a monster who’s presently serving life in jail for the sexual assault of two younger women, ages 12 and 15, who on the time of his crimes had been each his wives. Hold Candy: Pray and Obey thus boasts at the least some semblance of justice. Nonetheless, there’s little about this story that can depart one feeling upbeat. Dretzin’s four-part affair is a historical past lesson concerning the fashionable FLDS motion, which was spearheaded by Jeffs’ father, Rulon, the unique prophet, who even in his eighties was persevering with to marry as many younger girls as he may get his wrinkled arms on, together with Rebecca Wall, who speaks intimately concerning the nightmare of getting to share a home—and mattress—with this aged creep. Rulon’s phrase was regulation of their Salt Lake Metropolis neighborhood, and whereas there was shock and confusion when he handed away in 2002—since he’d proclaimed himself the everlasting vessel of the Almighty, and but wasn’t rising from the grave a rejuvenated younger man—his followers went alongside along with his devoted son’s elevation to prophet standing, in addition to his subsequent order that the FLDS flock relocate to the extra distant environs of Brief Creek, Utah.
Hold Candy: Pray and Obey is a blow-by-blow account of the previous 25 years of FLDS madness, however its precise topic is spiritual brainwashing, and the way in which wherein it will probably take all-consuming maintain of receptive (or naïve younger) minds. For proof of that, one want look no additional than the truth that FLDS members accepted not solely Jeffs as their new chief, however his determination to marry a few of his father’s sister-wives—who had been, in impact, his stepmothers. Such grossness was half and parcel of the FLDS, which indoctrinated members to imagine that the top occasions had been coming, and that adhering to the prophet’s instructions was the only path to the celestial kingdom hereafter. One other prerequisite was to have a secure of wives, as a result of that led to infants, and God demanded a military of pious devotees. Consequently, the foundations had been clear: males required docile and subservient girls who would have fixed intercourse with them.
From there, it was solely a brief leap into systemic pedophilia. As Hold Candy: Pray and Obey elucidates, Jeffs knew that this explicit observe could be frowned upon by regulation enforcement, and that no quantity of demonizing the skin world to his acolytes would change that. In response, he started doubling down on his management over his FLDS clan, replete with constructing a brand new compound in Eldorado, Texas, often known as the Craving for Zion Ranch that was presupposed to perform because the here-on-Earth model of the afterlife kingdom (i.e. Zion) that he saved promising them. In impact, it was only a extra self-sufficient fiefdom for him to run—one the place he owned all of the property, employed and employed everybody (together with cops and firemen), and outfitted it with surveillance cameras. He was this enclave’s God, match to do as he happy.
Hold Candy: Pray and Obey is a snapshot of the concern, intimidation, damaged households, and sinister misconduct begat by this case. Mercifully, director Dretzin crafts her portrait with nearly no dramatic recreations, as an alternative counting on a haunting assortment of archival pictures, dwelling movies, courtroom footage, and recorded proof to convey the unnerving strangeness of FLDS life, wherein girls dressed (as one speaker pointedly places it) like Laura Ingalls, and males preached in holier-than-thou tones that belied their baser designs. That materials culminates with clandestine pictures and audio tapes made by Jeffs of his sexual encounters along with his victims, that are so predictably disgusting that it’s no shock they landed him behind bars, the place he continues to create “revelations” which might be disseminated to his followers.
As is so typically the case with true-crime efforts like this, Hold Candy: Pray and Obey hinges on its interviews with survivors, and within the figures of Rebecca, Ruby Jessop, Alicia Rohbock, and Elissa Wall—whose testimony earned Jeffs an preliminary conviction for being an confederate to rape—it captures an intimate sense of the grip that FLDS theology has on adherents, and the means by which the church used religion as the muse for creating and sustaining a misogynistic paradigm designed to maintain girls docile and of their place—a state of being that Rulon known as “maintain candy.” Their means of studying to see the sunshine and escape their depressing existences turned out to be an arduous one, rendering them ostracized, vilified and lower off from mates and family members, and in that respect, Dretzin’s collection capabilities as a celebration of the energy and self-confidence essential to realize real liberation.
Most of all, although, Hold Candy: Pray and Obey comes throughout as a narrative intent on offering FLDS disciples—and cultists generally—with verifiable proof concerning each the ugly ulterior motives of their leaders, and the potential of leaving such nastiness behind. In fact, contemplating that fundamentalist Mormons aren’t allowed entry to Netflix (or TV, or the web), the chance of this collection altering hearts and minds might be scant. Nonetheless, at its greatest, it performs like an exposé designed much less for viewers who would by no means discover themselves in these circumstances than for these whose eyes have but to be totally opened.