Kiwi thriller will draw you in

BY VICTORIA GUILD

Nelson Mail TV reviewer Victoria Guild finds a New Zealand production that is likely to gain a cult following.

Ahhh, peace, love and happiness.

People toiling at organic vegetables, smiling and humming while wearing natural cotton pyjama-type garments and chanting "bountiful love". No contact with the outside world and a three-metre high fence to keep others out – or to keep you in.

Your cult alarm bells should have started ringing by now, as it's a pretty standard interpretation of what people imagine one to be like.

But cliche or not, The Cult (Thursday nights on TV2) has made an instant impression.

Nasty eyeball injections aside, this New Zealand-made thriller has all the ingredients to become a cult classic – if you'll forgive the pun.

When people start comparing new TV shows with Lost or Fringe, I start to get a little worried. But this show is not beyond the realms of credibility yet.

People around the world are sent photographs of relatives who have been missing for three years. They appear to be in the grip of a cult, which has been set up in Northland called Two Gardens. A quick internet search shows it's part of a wider worldwide movement, Momentum.

Renato Bartolomei (Shortland Street) stars as Michael Lewis, who wants to get his two sons, Ryan and Nathan, out of Two Gardens.

He's a lawyer recovering after being shot by a woman over a client he defended, and as he gets better decides to visit Nathan at the psychiatric hospital he is supposed to be residing in.

He arrives to find out Nathan was released into his custody three years earlier, which he wasn't, so we assume Ryan has taken Nathan into the cult with him.

Michael bowls up to the front gate of Two Gardens but is refused entry and told his sons don't want to see him by a couple of security guys who look menacing, despite wearing pyjamas.

Michael meets up with a bunch of others (the Liberators) and they set up camp in a house not far from the compound.

Included are a couple from England who brought an ex-SAS bodyguard with them, and two sisters from Sydney and Auckland looking for their brother.

There's a bit of in-fighting on the best tactics to use to try to find a way into the compound.

Michael goes ahead with his plan, which turns to custard, but also shows the cult plots to take no prisoners in whatever its evil world-domination plan is.

Cult leader Edward North (Latham Gaines) and his spooky doctor sidekick Cynthia Ross (Danielle Cormack) definitely have something in mind and poor old Nathan seems to be the guinea pig.

Ryan emerges from three weeks in isolation to be congratulated by North on renouncing his father and told he is now ready to make it to the next level.

Apparently, the next level allows you to have a "sanctioned relationship", which means you don't have to hide in a closet if you want to get close to another cult member.

However, as Ryan finds out, he has to renounce Nathan if he wants to get any further and in a moment of enlightenment decides he'd rather get Nathan out, so makes plans to escape.

Leaving a cult is never easy, and unfortunately Nathan has been drugged up to the eyeballs.

When he comes round, he starts freaking out and runs off during the middle of the escape.

In the midst of this, Michael's car is run off the road by a cult van and his passenger vanishes.

Michael gets conked on the head, but in a moment of consciousness sees his two sons in the bush during their escape attempt.

A lot of money has gone in to the production of this series and it shows. It is beautifully shot in the New Zealand bush and the acting is excellent. It's just a matter of finding out whether the liberators get their loved ones out, what evil plan the "bountiful love" cult leader has in mind and who sent the photos.

I just hope it doesn't get "lost" in its own cleverness.

ONE TO WATCH: The excellent Seven Ages of Rock is showing on Monday nights at 9.30pm on Prime. This week traces the story of how artistic and conceptual expression permeated rock from the pop-art multimedia experiments of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground to the sinister gentility of Peter Gabriel's Genesis via the psychedelia of Pink Floyd and the theatricality of David Bowie.

 

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