Documentary filmmaking has a habit of reminding us of a
truth that many would like to ignore: monsters are very real. As children, we’re
told by our parents that boogeymen don’t exist and that most people are
inherently good. Both of these things are true, but we often convince ourselves
that true evil is something of fiction. “Prophet’s Prey,” the latest
documentary from Amy Berg (“Deliver Us From Evil”), reminds us that there is
unimaginable horror in this world, often perpetrated in the name of religion
and under the banner of salvation. The film opens in limited release today,
September 18th, before a Showtime premiere on October 10th.
It is harrowing and stomach-turning. While I wish the form of the film wasn’t
quite so talking-head—“then this happened”—the story is so compelling and
terrifying that it’s hard to place too much cinematic flourish on top of it. It
speaks for itself. And what it says is scarier than any horror film this year.
Sam Brower is a private detective who spent much of his life
trying to bring the horror of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints to light. It’s chronicled in “Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year
Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day
Saints,” the main basis for this film, although it also works heavily from Jon
Krakauer’s excellent “Under the Banner of Heaven” (a book you really should
read, along with his “Into the Wild” and “Into Thin Air.”). In fact, Brower and
Krakauer approached Berg with the idea to make the film, and both appear
regularly in “Prophet’s Prey,” as leading experts on the saga of Warren Jeffs,
his dozens of “wives,” and the damage a self-proclaimed prophet perpetrated on
hundreds of people, including his own relatives.
Warren Jeffs was the son of Rulon Jeffs, another
self-proclaimed prophet and the leader of the FLDS. The film argues that as the
senior Jeffs was nearly on his deathbed, Warren worked his way into the position
of rightful heir. In 2002, he became “President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator”
of the FLDS. While Rulon Jeffs may have committed unspeakable crimes himself
(he may have had 75 wives and 65 children when he passed, and many of his wives
were underage), “Prey” makes the case that the evil of the father was amplified
in the son. Even before his father passed away, Warren was using his position
in the church to rape young girls in the name of religion.
Warren Jeffs took his power a step further than his
pedophilia, ruining the lives of anyone who dared challenge him. Within his
institution, he had the power to “re-assign” wives—as if they were cattle
moving from one barn to another—and would break up the homes of anyone who
dared call into question his relationship with a higher being, one who
regularly spoke through him. His almighty oversight of a compound of his
followers made him invincible, until the government took notice.
After a woman called the police to report that she was
married and had given birth at the age of 15. They raided the largest compound
of the FLDS, where they suspected Jeffs might be holed up, and hundreds of children
into custody. The case quickly fell apart, but Jeffs was still on their radar. The
accusations started piling up and really didn’t stop. Even relatives of Jeffs, including
his nephew, accused him of sexual assault. He was marrying 14-year-old girls
over and over again, telling them it was the prophet’s will. An arrest warrant
was issued for rape in 2006, and Jeffs rose to Top Ten Most Wanted list, right
next to Osama Bin Laden later that year. He was arrested in 2006, and went to
trial, one in which he did little more than take the 5th amendment.
He is serving in life in prison, but still exerts control over his church.
Clearly, there’s a terrifying story to be told here about
unchecked, uncontrollable power, and the horror that happens when it’s given to
a madman. Berg is a very technically proficient director, and the film moves
along at a nice clip, aided by a score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. There
were times where it felt a bit too routine to me, a problem in true crime
documentary filmmaking in that it’s really the subject matter and not the
filmmaking that often gets the most critical attention. This is a story that should
be heard, even if it turns the stomach, and Berg gets out of the way of it for
the most part, letting Jeffs’ own relatives and those directly impacted by his
reign of terror do the talking. At one point, I wished that there were more
female interview subjects (although one who escaped the nightmare of FLDS is
riveting) and then I realized that Berg and her team probably couldn’t find
many women directly impacted by FLDS who were willing to talk. Hopefully, “Prophet’s
Prey” will give those women the power to escape and make their voices heard.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/prophets-prey-2015
