Trust Me: The False Prophet

Netflix

Among a number of high-profile shows out on Netflix this month, from Running Point to Beef, there was one unexpected hit. That would be one of Netflix’s often well-done documentary series, Trust Me: The False Prophet.

The four-part series stayed on top of Netflix’s top 10 list for a long while, holding off even big new releases, and it remains in the list for the month. Here’s the synopsis:

“A cult expert and her videographer husband embed themselves in a vulnerable FLDS community in Utah, where they discover disturbing evidence about Samuel Bateman, who claims to be the successor to imprisoned prophet Warren Jeffs.”

The FLDS cult has already had a number of documentaries made about it, Sons of Perdition in 2010, Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil in 2018 and Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. This one takes place after the arrest and conviction of Jeffs in 2007, which was overturned in 2010, but then he was convicted in Texas for sexual assault of a minor and sentenced to life in prison.

This film is about Jeffs’ successor, Samuel Bateman, who was also arrested in 2022 and in 2024 was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Bateman’s rise included a claim that Jeffs had died (he hadn’t) as he began to assemble his own followership, which eventually included 20 “spiritual wives,” at least 10 of whom were children at the time.

The documentary from Rachel Dretzin is based on how a cult expert, Christine Marie, and her husband, Tolga Katas, recorded evidence against Bateman and the group under the guise of making a documentary meant to evangelize his message. It made up much of the evidence in the case against Bateman in the end.

The thrilling tale has review scores to match, with the series currently at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 97% from audiences, putting it among one of the highest-rated documentaries ever on the service, albeit with not with loads of reviews in on either side. Still, it’s certainly worth watching.

Trust Me: The False Prophet might actually be Netflix’s biggest success of the month, given that it’s led its viewership charts for most of it. Given that this is the fourth major documentary to cover the FLDS, it might be the last we see for a long while, but this one is certainly different, given its different focus and tale of undercover infiltrations. Check it out for yourself, and it’s only about 3.5 hours in total.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.