What To Watch
12 Documentaries to Stream About Cults and Cult-Like Figures
Go inside these gripping stories of power, truth, and survival.
By Ananda Dillon and Leah Carroll
April 24, 2026
12 Best Documentaries About Cults on Netflix - Netflix Tudum
The best true crime stories teach us about ourselves — about bravery, cowardice, greed, love, and fear. True crime documentaries can be chilling to watch. They can also expose a deep vein of truth, revealing facets of society that would otherwise remain hidden. Nowhere is that quality more potently on display than in stories about cults.
Documentaries and docuseries about cults expose not only their warped power dynamics and chilling secrets, but they also explore the voices and lives of those involved. If you’re looking for smart, fascinating deep dives into the world of cults, cult-like figures, and true crime, here are a few picks to get you started. Each of them is uniquely complicated and shows the capacity for cruelty lying dormant in the most unexpected people and places.
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Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.
Sarma Melngailis once reigned over one of the hottest restaurants in New York City: the all vegan and raw Pure Food and Wine. But when Melgailis comes under the spell of a man she knows as “Shane Fox” (real name: Anthony Strangis), he promises her everything from a restaurant empire to eternal life for her beloved pit bull.
The central and unsettling truth of Bad Vegan isn’t so much about how a skilled con man was able to work his way into the life of a successful entrepreneur but, rather, how many of us might’ve fallen for him ourselves, given our circumstances, ambition and the onerous financial burdens that stand in the way of our dreams.
Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator
Most people associate the name Bikram Choudhury with the brand of yoga — practiced in a 104-degree room — that he popularized in the US and Europe. But the documentary Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator shows the dark side of the wellness movement. Choudhury regularly hectored his fawning acolytes, mocking their weight and pressuring them into grueling sessions that stretched for hours. As his empire grew, he recruited people from around the world to attend his nine-week teacher certification courses. Lawsuits filed against the yogi allege that Choudhury and his inner circle used the courses as hunting grounds for young women, who were sexually assaulted and held against their will. This is an unnerving story of greed, racism and abuse operating under the pretense of self-improvement.
Chaos: The Manson Murders
It’s impossible when discussing cults to leave out Charles Manson. He captured headlines in 1969 when members of his cult violently murdered the well-known actor Sharon Tate and her guests at her Beverly Hills home. How did Manson, who never actually killed anyone himself, convince his followers to commit such atrocious acts? The case against Manson and his “Family” posited that their crimes were a result of drugs, a conspiracy to start a race war, and indoctrination by rock ’n’ roll music. But what if it went deeper? What if government experiments in mind control using LSD in the MK Ultra program were used on Manson and his followers? Famed documentarian Errol Morris delves into these alternative theories.
Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult
This modern cult is adamant that it isn’t one. Blurring the line between church and business, Robert Shinn founded the Shekinah Church in the ’90s. He also started a series of small businesses, most of which were unsuccessful. Then he formed 7M, a management company for TikTok dancers. Miranda and Melanie Wilking were two sisters and dancers lured into Shinn’s circle. They soon found out that, along with performing, they were expected to attend Shinn’s church and abide by its practices. One such practice is “dying to oneself,” which involves cutting off communication with family. Melanie was able to walk away from Shinn, but Miranda stayed, leading her family to make a viral social media video begging her to contact them. This opened the door for more and more former followers to come forward, which has led to a current investigation.
The Doomsday Cult of Antares de la Luz
Ramón Gustavo Castillo Gaete was a Chilean musician before he founded the doomsday cult Antares de la Luz in 2009. Claiming to be the second coming of Christ and ascribing to the Mayan prophecy predicting the world’s end on Dec. 21, 2012, Gaete led his small but devoted group by using ayahuasca, controlling their relationships, demanding sex from female members, and often beating them. He was paranoid about “dark beings,” which he claimed were sent by Lucifer to destroy him and prevent him from saving the world. After impregnating one of his members — which he had previously claimed was impossible — he explained that the child was a dark being. This led to a shocking crime that rocked much of South America.
The Family
If someone told you that there was an ultra secret group of conservative Christians whose tentacles reach deep into the highest echelons of power in Washington, DC, you might dismiss them as a conspiracy theorist. But this docuseries, based on journalist Jeff Sharlet’s book, makes the case that the Family, founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide as a Bible study group for men, does just that. Sharlet argues that the group’s rise to power came when Vereide’s successor Doug Coe began sponsoring the National Prayer Breakfast — and embarked on a mission to blur the lines between the church and state.
As Coe developed relationships among Washington’s elite at the annual event, the series shows, he soon had the ear of presidents and powerful legislators and used them to evangelize Christianity to leaders around the world. Most of the Family’s work is done in the open, leading the viewer to wonder what exactly kind of power the group wields behind the scenes. In an age when political transparency is more important than ever, the series raises deeply disturbing questions.
The Keepers
The Keepers, a docuseries from Ryan White and Jessica Hargreaves, suggests a connection between the decades-old murders of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a Catholic nun who taught at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, and 20-year-old Joyce Malecki. That connection? The Archdiocese of Baltimore, and the Baltimore County Police Department who together allegedly created a cult of silence around sex crimes committed by Joseph Maskell, who at the time of the murders was a Catholic priest.
Cesnik was beloved among her students for her free-spiritedness, creativity and encouragement. Decades later, Cesnik’s former students Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub honor her memory by determining to expose the shadowy culture of abuse and corruption that they believe created the conditions for her death. This docuseries doesn’t end with a trial or a revelation. Instead, it inspires the viewer to seek truth.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey
Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (an unofficial polygamous offshoot of the Mormon Church) is currently serving a life sentence plus 20 years for crimes that include the rapes of two of his underage “wives.” The girls were just 12 and 15 years old.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey examines some of the most nefarious techniques of a successful cult leader, namely, using sexism and, eventually, rape, as a means of psychological control. As he rose within the FLDS, Jeffs surrounded himself with a close circle of lieutenants who aided and abetted his crimes, committed in the name of “God.” Jeffs enjoyed complete impunity — for a time, at least — as his followers took his word as literal gospel, even as he separated families and threatened eternal damnation for those who spoke out about his sex crimes.
One of Us
This documentary feature, from the team that also made Jesus Camp, follows the lives of three people who choose to leave the insular Hasidic Jewish community in New York after years of enduring what they say was sexual and domestic violence. Having made the decision to leave and be exiled by the Hasidic community, they now face the nearly impossible task of assimilating in a secular world, one they’ve each lived almost wholly apart from, while maintaining their faith and sense of self. At turns devastating and deeply inspirational, the film is less about religion and more about those brave enough to defy an all-powerful institution that rejects individuality in order to retain control.
Raël: The Alien Prophet
Founded in France in the 1970s by Claude Vorilhon (aka Raël), the Raëlian movement’s core belief is that a scientifically advanced alien species called the Elohim created humanity through cloning. It’s said this species will return to bless their faithful and help them live forever by cloning themselves in perpetuity. Leaning heavily on pseudoscience, Raël built upon the successful cloning of Dolly the sheep, as well as a growing UFO craze. Claiming to be a movement of sexual liberation, Raël would choose women in his group to be his “angels.” Members of the religion could attain higher ranks through substantial financial contributions. Despite his group’s odd practices — nude sunbathing among them — Raëliens, as they are called, have remained an active cult for over 50 years.
Trust Me: The False Prophet
If you’ve watched Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (also on this list and directed by Rachel Dretzin, director of Trust Me: The False Prophet), you may have thought Warren Jeffs’s FLDS community was safe after he went to jail. You’d be wrong. Cult expert Christine Marie and her videographer husband, Tolga Katas, moved to Short Creek, Utah, to support the struggling community. Marriage was banned while Jeffs was incarcerated, so everyone was surprised when a member of the community, Samuel Bateman, started collecting wives. Several of them were underage girls. He claimed to be the new prophet and was delighted to let Christine and Tolga make a documentary about him, not knowing they were actually collecting evidence of his crimes for the FBI.
Wild Wild Country
In the early ’80s, in an attempt to flee persecution in India, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, his lieutenant Sheela Birnstiel (aka Ma Anand Sheela) and a few thousand members of the Rajneesh community bought a 100-square-mile ranch in Antelope, Oregon. Their goal was to establish Rajneeshpuram — a self-sustaining utopian community — but that dream devolved amidst clashing egos.
From producers Mark and Jay Duplass and directed by brothers Macclain and Chapman Way, this six-part docuseries unspools into a complex exploration of faith, greed and violence. Along the way, the filmmakers take a few detours into mass food poisoning, the machinations of local politics and even the invention of Nike sneakers. It is a Wild Wild ride.
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