The Church of Scientology has never been what you'd call a major player in the global religious landscape—its membership numbers pale in comparison to the world's great faiths. Yet you'd hardly know it from the sheer volume of ink spilled and film stock expended on the subject. For decades, this controversial organisation has commanded attention far exceeding its size, thanks largely to its Hollywood constituency and a persistent stream of allegations painting it as something rather more sinister than a mere church: a dangerous cult, critics say, with a penchant for intimidation, secrecy, and control. Small wonder, then, that filmmakers keep returning to the subject. Among them is Louis Theroux, the BBC's famously unflappable documentarian, whose 2015 feature My Scientology Movie approaches this well-trodden territory with a characteristic blend of curiosity and quirkiness that sets it apart from more conventional exposés.
Theroux has spent the better part of three decades carving out a singular niche in British television, wandering through the stranger corners of American society with that distinctive combination of polite persistence and wide-eyed bewilderment. Whether embedding himself with survivalists, prison inmates, or religious extremists, he's made a career of letting unusual subjects reveal themselves through patient, often awkward conversation. My Scientology Movie fits this mould comfortably, yet it also pushes into new territory—partly by necessity, as it turns out.
The film opens with Theroux attempting the straightforward approach: requesting access to the Church itself, hoping to secure interviews with officials and perhaps even a glimpse inside its operations. The response is predictable enough—flat rejections followed by increasingly stern legal threats. Rather than abandon the project, Theroux pivots to the other side of the divide, seeking out the Church's most vocal detractors. Chief among these is Mark Rathbun, a former senior executive who left the organisation under acrimonious circumstances and now serves as Theroux's guide through the labyrinthine world of Scientology's internal hierarchy. Rathbun accompanies the filmmaker to Gold Base, the Church's heavily fortified California compound, where their presence immediately provokes the organisation's own surveillance apparatus—teams of camera-wielding operatives who materialise to film the filmmakers filming, creating a bizarre standoff of competing lenses and mutual suspicion.
Denied access to David Miscavige, the Church's diminutive but allegedly fearsome leader, Theroux devises an unconventional solution: he will reconstruct the incidents described by defectors using actors. The film documents this process in detail, from casting calls to the meticulous preparation of Andrew Perez, who plays Miscavige with an intensity that proves genuinely unsettling. Rob Alter, meanwhile, takes on the role of Tom Cruise, allowing Theroux to dramatise alleged episodes involving Scientology's most famous adherent. These sequences have a strange, almost dreamlike quality—Hollywood reconstructing Hollywood, in a sense—and they raise questions about the ethics and aesthetics of documentary filmmaking that the film doesn't quite resolve.
As the narrative unfolds, the relationship between Theroux and Rathbun grows increasingly fractious. Theroux begins pressing his guide on uncomfortable questions about his own past, particularly the aggressive tactics he allegedly employed while still within the Church's upper echelons—practices Theroux characterises, provocatively, as "terroristic." The tension becomes palpable, and what begins as a somewhat chummy partnership gradually sours into something more adversarial. It's here that the film finds its most compelling dynamic, as two men ostensibly on the same side discover the limits of their alliance.
Behind the camera, veteran British documentarian John Dower brings a polished sensibility to the proceedings, while Theroux himself handles writing, producing, and narration duties. The film's atmosphere of creeping paranoia is amplified considerably by Dan Jones's score, which occasionally swells into something resembling a science fiction thriller—an apt choice given the space-opera cosmology at the heart of Scientology's belief system. This surreal quality is further enhanced by Theroux's own demeanour: his trademark deadpan delivery stands in sharp contrast to Rathbun's more volatile emotional register, generating moments of genuine humour amid the tension.
Yet for all its careful construction, My Scientology Movie is destined to be remembered for a sequence that had absolutely nothing to do with Scientology whatsoever. During filming at a motel, the set was crashed by a woman in a bikini who wandered through the scene in a state of apparent confusion. She later identified herself as actress Paz de la Huerta, though neither Theroux nor Rathbun had any idea who she was or why she was there. The incident, entirely accidental, became the film's most widely discussed moment—a surreal interruption that somehow encapsulated the weirdness of the entire enterprise.
The film's reception was complicated by unfortunate timing. Its London premiere came mere months after Alex Gibney's Going Clear, a more straightforward and arguably more comprehensive documentary on the same subject backed by HBO's considerable resources. Theroux's film was inevitably overshadowed, and its American distribution was delayed by a full year, further diminishing its impact. The complications didn't end there: Rathbun subsequently disavowed the project, accusing Theroux of deliberately provoking Church members to manufacture dramatic footage—a charge that lingers over the film's more confrontational sequences.
These controversies notwithstanding, My Scientology Movie remains an engaging, often genuinely entertaining piece of work. Its willingness to experiment with form—blending traditional documentary techniques with dramatic reconstruction and Hollywood artifice—sets it apart from more conventional treatments of the subject. Yet this same quality may ultimately limit its effectiveness. Dower's slick direction and Theroux's whimsical approach sometimes lend the proceedings an air of artificiality that sits uneasily with the serious allegations at the film's core. For viewers seeking a rigorous investigation into Scientology's practices, this may prove frustrating. As a character study of two very different men circling each other against the backdrop of a deeply strange organisation, however, it offers something rather more memorable than another straightforward exposé.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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