A (1998) Reviews

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The 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway shook Japanese society, resulting in bitter recriminations and national soul-searching comparable to Watergate in America. The group responsible -- Aum Shinrikyo -- was little known to the average Japanese. Believing in a mixture of varying strands of Buddhism along with elements of New Age spiritualism and with rumors of drug-use and bizarre rituals, the group and its members were widely vilified by Japan's voracious media. Six months after the gas attack when Aum's original leaders -- guru Shoko Asahara along with Ikuo Hayashi, Fumihiro Joyu, and others -- were carted off to jail, documentary filmmaker Tatsuya Mori approached Aum to shoot an objective fly-on-the-wall-style documentary about this much discussed and maligned sect. Focusing on the Aum's most visible member, not jailed Hiroshi Araki, Mori shows how frighteningly ordinary these members are. This film was screened at the 1999 Yamagata Documentary Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Director(s):: Tatsuya Mori

Format(s):: DVD
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Average Ratings

(3 member reviews)

Member Reviews

	Michael R.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful

When I rented the movie, I thought I'd gain some insight about the cult and what made them tick. The movie did follow a young disciple as he dealt with the media, society and had a run in with the police. He was a polite, nerdy kid who is dealing with a lot of pressure. The editing is poor. There are a lot of scenes that go on and on for no reason. I watched it in double time through the last half of the movie. It did give an interesting insight into Japanese society, but did not teach me anything about cults.

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	Mark N.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful

This film was both interesting and boring at the same time. It chronicles the aftermath of the cult that poisoned a Tokyo subway with Sarin gas. The thing is, these cultist were portrayed as seemingly innocent people, and give the viewer an image that they were being persecuted, when in fact, the so called persecutors were simply the authorities who had every right to be suspicious and cautious of these cultists. The principal spokesperson for the cult is portrayed as this seemingly nerdy fellow who seems at odds with himself, when in reality, he's just so mis-guided that he doesn't know fiction from reality. It's too bad that they didn't follow the Jamestown followers and all drink from the same Sarin kool-aid and maybe they wouldn't have made this pseudo-documentary to try to provide a seemingly neutral (although very biased) reporting of their post-Sarin life and times. If you want to see what mass killers being portrayed as normal people are like, this movie is for you.

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	Jack W.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful

I saw the first 20 minutes of this and thought I was going to be educated about the situation; however, this looked more like a psycho examination of those who were close to the loon who pulled the stunt. I personally found the film to be lacking substance. Why speak to a group of crazy's whose diet, thought process, and devoid of logic was not worth the film used to make this movie.

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