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Hot take: reading a survivor's own memoir beat watching the Netflix doc on the same group, and it wasn't close
I finally read Ruth's actual book about growing up in that Kansas group after watching the three part doc twice, and the difference floored me. The doc gave the leader maybe 20 minutes of screen time and played his sermons like a horror soundtrack, which works, sure, but the book shows how normal the first year felt. She was 14 when her mom signed them over in 1987, and she quotes the exact grocery list rules they had, like no cereal with more than 4 grams of sugar. In the doc that whole stretch is one fuzzy montage with sad piano. I get why film has to compress, but if you only watch the show you miss how the slow stuff is the actual trap. Has anyone else read a survivor memoir that made the doc version feel like a trailer?
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abby72623h ago
Oh man, and that slow boring stretch is exactly what makes the book hit harder.
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