A still from Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult. (Photo: Netflix)
The filmmaking in Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult suggests that non-fiction directors these days — especially those that enter into agreements with Netflix — are inherently more suited to glossy scandal than old-fashioned drama. There is a deeply sad story buried inside the streamer’s latest shock-doc — a story about lost youth, fragile familial bonds, and the unfortunate tendency of broken people to be preyed upon by monsters — but the brash style often overshadows it. Almost in spite of itself, however, Dancing for the Devil manages to create several genuinely moving moments in its efforts to expose the alleged crimes of a pastor named Robert Shinn, who lured unsuspecting young social media influencers into his twisted world with the promise of salvation, success, and greater celebrity.
The title is a play on words. Not only were these talented TikTokers literally dancing to Shinn’s tunes, they were also willing to sell a piece of their souls for fame. We enter the story through the eyes of the Wilking family, who made headlines some years ago when they alleged in a live Instagram video that their beloved daughter and sister, Miranda, had cut all ties with them after having joined Shinn’s Shekinah church. Miranda was lured into the church by a fellow TikTok dancer, and had subsequently signed herself up with Shinn’s management company, 7M. But this, her family realised across a painful few months, was simply a front for his creepy cult.
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A still from Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult. (Photo: Netflix)
Miranda would post regular videos on social media, giving the impression to her millions of followers that she was a successful influencer, but in reality, she was being exploited by Shinn’s operation. He’d book lucrative brand deals for her and the other dancers through 7M, but would funnel up to 70% of their earnings to himself via his church. And they gladly played along. The show rounds up several former members of the cult, alongside an eager journalist and concerned family, but what it crucially lacks is the voice of either Shinn, or one of his many associates. We hear (potentially stolen) clips of his sermons, nearly all of which revolve around repentance and servitude, but we never quite understand his modus operandi, even if his motivations become increasingly clear as the show goes along.
As we’ve seen in so many documentaries about cults — Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, Raël: The Alien Prophet, Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey are tremendous recent examples — charismatic leaders like Shinn tend to control the minds of men, but their real objective is invariably to abuse the bodies of women. It is only in episode two, when the show introduces two new sibling subjects, that the true scope of Shinn’s crimes becomes clear. He didn’t begin exploiting innocent people in 2019; he’d been at it for decades. During this time, he also attempted to launch himself as a movie producer, and was involved in a forgotten romantic-comedy starring Meghan Markle.
Having used Miranda’s sister, Melanie, as the audience surrogate in this strange, sinister world, the show introduces the Korean immigrant sisters Melanie and Priscylla Lee, who joined Shinn’s cult in 1999 after having been tragically abandoned by their parents. Episode three — the last one — features two staggering scenes which will make nearly every viewer wonder how they were staged. They seem like impromptu conversations — the first is between the two sisters and the second is between Priscylla and the father that abandoned her — but they couldn’t possibly have been created off the cuff. These scenes are simultaneously surreal and surprisingly effective in what they’re able to convey — loss, regret, and fury.
This one thread alone could’ve made for a more intimate look at this sprawling tragedy, but director Derek Doneen (who once made a movie about Kailash Satyarthi by the way), takes a frustratingly conventional, all-encompassing approach to the story. The semi-backwards structure is interesting, but there are ultimately too many people competing for the title of main character, which reduces what could’ve been an insightful exploration of power and human fragility to a slickly produced YouTube explainer video. Even though the show finds itself naturally gravitating towards the human fallout angle, it keeps flirting with the idea of being a cautionary tale instead, as if it has a score to settle with the very concept of social media.
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A still from Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult. (Photo: Netflix)
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There could have been a way to tell this story without implying, even subconsciously, that these people were asking for it. A lot of them backed out the second the scandal blew up in the news, but Miranda stayed behind. Unlike so many other documentaries about cults, there is no clear end-game here; 7M and Shinn are still at it. Miranda is still denying that she’s been brainwashed; her family is still struggling to reconnect with her. But what makes this story so insidiously terrifying is that none of these people were ever actually locked up. They were always theoretically free to move around, interact with outsiders, and even the families that they had seemingly cut off. And yet, they chose to remain, sometimes for decades. “It’s not illegal to run a cult, it’s not illegal to control somebody’s daily life,” a journalist explains. The only way to bring a cult leader down is by proving that they’ve committed a crime, ideally of a financial nature, because that’s easier to prove in court than sexual abuse. This, unfortunately, is the harsh reality. Exploring it in greater depth would’ve made Dancing for the Devil a richer experience, and certainly more engrossing than it already is.
Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult
Director – Derek Doneen
Rating – 3/5
