My Sci­en­tol­ogy Movie

What hap­pens when you start drink­ing reli­gious Kool-Aid? Well, if you’re a Sci­en­tol­o­gist, you essen­tial­ly believe that the plot to Men in Black is real. Appar­ent­ly we are all aliens inhab­it­ing human shells, and dear olé plan­et earth is but a pit stop on the grand jour­ney of our extrater­res­tri­al exis­tence. Sounds fun.

Unlike oth­er reli­gious camps, you have no per­son­al Jesus to report your sins. Ain’t no heav­en, nor hell. Instead, to make the most of this human skin dwell time, your mis­sion is to become a mem­ber of the inner sanc­tum of the church – a Sea Org. How do you do this? Sim­ple. Ded­i­cate a hefty por­tion of your time, and most cru­cial­ly, give a hel­lu­va lot of mon­ey to the oper­a­tion. Dur­ing this cash haem­or­rhag­ing adven­ture, you also learn how to chan­nel your inner (alien) spir­it, known as the Thetan, via var­i­ous activ­i­ties designed to pen­e­trate deep into your true self.

Enter Louis Ther­oux – per­haps the world’s most endear­ing, sar­don­ic doc­u­men­tar­i­an oper­at­ing today – on a mis­sion to infil­trate Scientology’s iron-gat­ed Cal­i­for­nia HQ, and find out what’s up. From the off, the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy reveals itself rough­ly as expect­ed: a rigid­ly hier­ar­chi­cal, noto­ri­ous­ly secre­tive world, sur­round­ed by a size­able halo of law­suits and alle­ga­tions of vio­lence. While Ther­oux makes a hand­ful of fee­ble attempts to ​‘talk’ to the Sci­en­tol­o­gists he meets while film­ing, these dis­ci­ples are exces­sive­ly hos­tile in their unwill­ing­ness to inter­act with him, let alone have him sniff­ing around the perime­ters of their hal­lowed loca­tions with a camera.

Deter­mined to shine a light on their prac­tices, Ther­oux enlists the help of the self-pro­claimed for­mer ​“bad­dest ass dude in Sci­en­tol­ogy,” Mark Rath­bun. A now-exiled mem­ber, Rath­bun once ruled along­side the upper ech­e­lons of the church, report­ing only to cur­rent Grand Poobah (not offi­cial title) David Mis­cav­ige. With Mark’s aid, actors are cast to por­tray the organisation’s most infa­mous char­ac­ters, and re-enact its aggres­sive activities.

The spiel of Sci­en­tol­ogy alone, told via these the­atri­cal tableaux direct­ed under Mark’s tute­lage, could have com­prised a film in its own right. Watch­ing Theroux’s abil­i­ty to deploy his calm cool in the face of mad-eyed Sci­en­tol­o­gists who appear along the way is a delight, but also unsur­pris­ing. It’s an explo­ration that would be best suit­ed to a mul­ti-part series, where Ther­oux could spend time flesh­ing out the mad­ness he unearths.

The most com­pelling moments in the film are excit­ing, unnerv­ing­ly fun­ny and whol­ly fright­en­ing – they are all moments with Mark. A seem­ing­ly casu­al chat while dri­ving that turns sour in a nanosec­ond, where Ther­oux push­es Rath­bun a step too far. A recre­ation of a Sci­en­tol­ogy inter­ro­ga­tion tech­nique, where Ther­oux dis­obeys Rathbun’s directions.

A dri­ve that takes Rath­bun that lit­tle bit too close to an infa­mous Sci­en­tol­ogy fortress, where the most devout and trust­ed Sea Orgs alleged­ly car­ry out their chill­ing tech­niques. And in these moments we wit­ness glimpses of a man who seems capa­ble of snap­ping a person’s neck while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly erupt­ing into hys­ter­i­cal laugh­ter. Moments where Rath­bun appears awash with drunk­en pow­er after res­ur­rect­ing his for­mer activ­i­ties. Moments where you feel uncom­fort­able because of how close Rath­bun teeters to the edge of his unhinged precipice.

And this human see­saw we are privy to extends far beyond sci­en­tol­ogy, feel­ing espe­cial­ly weighty amid the cur­rent sociopo­lit­i­cal cli­mate. As the world watch­es, in aston­ish­ment and dis­be­lief, while mil­lions become brain­washed by a fig­ure like Don­ald Trump, a man who built an entire career upon ideas as absurd and unfound­ed as the Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy, many strug­gle to under­stand exact­ly how any­one can believe such non­sense. But that’s the thing… To rea­son with the indoc­tri­nat­ed is futile, because their devo­tion to a cause or reli­gion defies rationality.

It is only in inti­mate por­traits of some­one like Mark Rath­bun where we are able to wit­ness just how pow­er­ful one man, one organ­i­sa­tion, or one idea can become – dis­cov­er­ing where their cracks and weak­ness­es lie, and how to stop them.