Das Idol (1982)

Das Idol: Directed by Ted Kotcheff. With Michael O’Keefe, Karen Allen, Peter Fonda, James Woods. A rootless young man is drawn into an unnamed religious cult by a beautiful girl. Every moment with the group causes him to become increasingly under the control of the cult’s leader. After his parents fail in their attempt, they hire someone who has experience, kidnapPing, and then ‘de-programming’ – undoing the mental damage – which had been done to him.

“I just saw this for the first time and it was very striking how similar the cult seemed to the one in Midsommar. Perhaps these depictions are common cult tropes, or perhaps this obscure film had more impact than one would expect.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis movie starts off pretty strong but stumbles in the third act in multiple ways.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eJames Woodsu0026#39; character is pretty funny and perhaps itu0026#39;s worth watching the film just to see it. But this character seems to not belong to this movieu0026#39;s really.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe deprogramming scenes– well, theyu0026#39;re very interesting, but Iu0026#39;m left wondering how realistically depicted this is. My gut feeling is itu0026#39;s only very slightly based on real deprogrammings.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film is severely marred by the Holywood Ending, where the two main brainwashed kids run away from the cult hand in hand, and conveniently, despite extraordinary earlier efforts by the cult to recapture the boy, suddenly the cult doesnu0026#39;t seem to care. Itu0026#39;s a record scratching moment.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlso, before that, and by themselves, that boy and girl discuss their old names and lives before joining the cult. This is extremely problematic, because it makes it look like they arenu0026#39;t u0026quot;brainwashedu0026quot; at all, and are perfectly aware of what they are doing. And if they are, then they are adults making decisions, and the later capture and deprogramming of the boy is, in fact, kidnapping and torture. It also means he shouldnu0026#39;t have had hallucinations during u0026quot;deprogramming.u0026quot;”