The Doomsday Cult of Antares De La Luz (2024) User Reviews

Dark Stars

[Pairic · 7/10 · 28 April 2024]

The Doomsday Cult of Antares De La Luz: A small scale Chilean Cult which had a larger effect due to human sacrifice.. The founders names was originally Ramon de la luz but he changed it to Antares de la luz, Antares being a rather bright star. He was a musician, tutored village kids, talking heads in the documentary speak well of his pre-cult activities. He took to using hallucinogenic drugs, mostly consisting of ayahuasca-derived substances after going through a ceremony with a shaman who appears in the film. He formed a cult whose members lived a regimented lifestyle. Shortly afterwards he discovered he was God. Now how could you disobey the edicts of the Supreme Being? Several cult members are also interviewed and footage of them with the police is also shown. They don't try to downplay their roles in the crimes but do plea that they were under duress and heavily drugged. You'll have to view the documentary ro learn how the cult moved from sacrificing animals to slaying an infant. Interesting documentary, could have been tightened up though, would have benefited from a 15 minute cut in it;s 100 minute running time. Directed by Santiago Correa, Written by Valerie Schenkman. On Netflix. 7/10.

Cleaning their image

[pahm-96787 · 2/10 · 27 April 2024]

Apparently it's a documentary made to clean the killers reputation. 2 years of prison for killing a 3 days old baby is outrageous. In the documentary they don't take responsibility of their actions besides saying that they were influenced by these crazy."prophet". This documentary shows how little justice there is for victims when the criminals are from rich families in Chile.

The documentary lacks of critics to the killers and their responsibilities, they appear just as people who made a mistake for following their need to believe in something. They did it just for love. They lied, they betrayed and killed. Apparently for love to a god.

image washing

[davidvaldiviar · 1/10 · 9 May 2024]

Documentary that presents the victimization of those who murdered an innocent baby...A reflection of how the rich can do whatever they want in this country. The accomplices of the murder continue to live their lives normally in their luxurious homes, without repentance...when they should be paying an exemplary sentence in prison. It is shocking how they do not problematize what they did, Pablo Undurraga and Natalia Guerra should be in jail, the Chilean judicial system is shameful. In fact, the making of this documentary gives the impression that rich people can pay (without remorse) for an entire documentary to remain victims or whitewash their image, which is irresponsible on the part of the production company, however, the money it's more important...Poor rich people.

Painful to watch

[orcinussr · 4/10 · 29 April 2024]

When you introduce the most powerful physcoactive drugs on the planet then you get this, 9 times out of ten, mix an already charasmatic leader and religious idealogy and boom...

But what I REALLY want to say is : idiotic morons! Idiotic morons! Idiotic morons! Idiotic morons! Idiotic morons! Idiotic morons!

And now understand the violence to innocents - well....

"and he made us..." " and we had to..."

enough said! Repugnant

//in terms of the documentary objectively, above average.

If I'm being honest, this is a poor documentary about a subject that could have been "covered" better, in general -

Snoozefest

[chelseat-88559 · 2/10 · 26 April 2024]

I fell asleep three times during this meandering creek of nothingness. The first fourth of the film sets up the fact that it is a documentary about a cult. I am not honestly sure if it ever defines the cult, the purpose of the cult, where these people came from and why we should empathize, etc. It may have at some point but I slept through it. It just moves so incredibly slow, the interviews are interspersed and not necessarily part of the current story. I don't know. I woke up at the end feeling relieved it was over and angry at the film makers. If this is supposed to make us feel bad for anyone it failed. I just felt contempt. Contempt for the voice actors doing the interviews and as always the mumbling and aiyuhuasca visuals and still images that weren't crime scene images but those generic things you see on youtube conspiracy theory videos. Those are somehow more engaging though. Maybe this was a tragedy. The storytelling definitely was... Thanks for the sleep I guess.

Evading and lack of critical view

[fbnaulin · 4/10 · 6 May 2024]

Lazy documentary that it seems to serve the only purpose of cleaning the killers image.

It has problems to find its right tone: psychological, police chronicle, or court story. It, but it fails in every one of them. Also, it evades the social, economical, political, and religious context in wich this story unfolds, presenting a generic montage of world news from those years. It never address that the murderers came from wealthy families, and such.

There's some cool TV series presentation, specially in the opening, and dialogs. They sound unnatural, rehearsed, and generally: anecdotal. The whole crime has this light tone. The only things that feels powerful and real are some archive footage from court and PDI police women.

Finally, the conclusions: "as a society, we are all guilty". It relativizes the agressors responsability, and makes the whole murder very fickle.

Annoying AI dub (English)

[chase-batson · 2/10 · 27 April 2024]

The Netflix English dub was definitely all AI voices. High quality, but still very noticeable and annoying. It's sad to think that this is where dubbed shows might be headed. It's so lazy, and lacks personality and humanity. I'm sure there is no shortage of voice actors; someone had to train the AI voice... Maybe they're doing it to save money, maybe there really is a hiring issue, but regardless it is super disappointing. I just had to call this out.

Now, about the actual show. The voice issue bothered me so much, I paid much less attention to the actual content than I should have. Overall I found that the events of the story were overhyped in the introduction. I was expecting a lot more to have happened. That being said, it is a crazy story. I respect all the victims(?) coming forward and telling their story. It's a wild story, so it feels like it should have been more exciting to hear than it was.

I'm starting to think that the whole production of this film is just low effort. The lack of substance, the AI voices, etc. I think it took away from what was otherwise a great story.