![‘The Leader’ Review: A Boring Look at the Fascinating Heaven’s Gate Cult [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/15100712/THE-LEADER-BenMullen-2.jpg "‘The Leader’ Review: A Boring Look at the Fascinating Heaven’s Gate Cult [Tribeca]")
“People read fiction for emotion,” observed the late novelist Sinclair Lewis, “not information.” In an era where an explosion of interest in streaming documentaries and oral storytelling through podcasts, there is no shortage of information delivery systems for those intrigued by true crime and real cults. The chief duty of any fictional filmmaker attempting to cash in on this boom is to offer the emotional intelligence that sticking to the facts cannot always provide.
On this metric, and many others, “The Leader” fails a form of meaningful engagement with the much-mythologized cult of Heaven’s Gate. Writer/director Michael Gallagher pulls out all manner of stops in the visual style and narrative technique, but they all falter because a more fundamental human question remains unanswered. At no point does the film make a convincing effort to answer how this group of people came together in the 1970s, what bonded them as a community through the 1980s, and why they ultimately committed mass suicide in 1997.
When small things in a movie grab outsized attention, it’s always a sign that the project fails to engage on a deeper level. And while “The Leader” almost certainly worked within the tight budget constraints of an independent production, the fact that the hair and makeup work is notable enough to be a distraction from the beginning sets the tone for what’s to come. This isn’t even a nod to the heinous bowl cuts that Heaven’s Gate members sport; it’s to the unconvincing wig on Vera Farmiga’s Bonnie Lou Nettles and the pasted-on bushman eyebrows of Tim Blake Nelson’s Marshall “Herff” Applewhite that look straight from a Spirit Halloween store.
![‘The Leader’ Review: A Boring Look at the Fascinating Heaven’s Gate Cult [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/15100714/THE-LEADER-BenMullen-3-1024x634.jpg)
This is but the most obvious element of “The Leader” that makes the film feel like cult leader cosplay. Replace Chris Spilfogel’s ominous, throbbing score with a laugh track, and the film’s most intense scenes could easily be “Saturday Night Live” sketches. Gallagher’s focus on aesthetics and affectation, with no undergirding psychological understanding, makes his work feel parodic rather than penetrating.
Perhaps, at this late stage of the boom in storytelling about new religious movements, Gallagher thought his film did not need to touch on the subgenre’s more obvious, boilerplate elements. “The Leader” either breezes through or elides key details of how Heaven’s Gate originated and cohered into a tight-knit clan. The edit jumps back so rapidly between different stages of the cult’s development, denoted by different film stocks or aspect ratios, with little sense of narrative logic. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle with a good chunk of the pieces missing.
Plenty of this withheld information is easy enough to intuit; these groups tend to follow predictable patterns of formation, after all. But what “The Leader” intends to render as elemental comes across as half-baked and ambivalent. Gallagher loses focus on the heart of his story – what actually binds lost souls together so compactly that they lose all logical faculties – because he’s too busy trying to pull out all the bells and whistles with nods to found footage and documentary technique throughout.
The film does not lack intrigue, and developments among the members at least keep “The Leader” from being a total snooze. In a rare moment of specificity, Bonnie asserts that their emerging collective needs to take an all-or-nothing stance on sexuality. They should embrace free love or demand celibacy. The latter wins out, causing issues stemming from the head, with blurred lines between Herff and their devoted member, Warren (Jim Parsons). This confusion trickles all the way down to the rank-and-file members like Michelle (Grace Caroline Currey) and David (Simon Rex), two lost souls for whom the strictest of rules cannot constrain their bodily impulses.
![‘The Leader’ Review: A Boring Look at the Fascinating Heaven’s Gate Cult [Tribeca]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/15100710/THE-LEADER-BenMullen-4-1024x541.jpg)
More often, however, “The Leader” dwells in unintended ambiguity. Gallagher strings together enough components of a cult’s rise and fall to make these scenes feel something like a narrative film. But he pays a perverse tribute to Heaven’s Gate with this hodgepodge resembling the group’s own ethos. This is a disjointed collection of ideas, sourced from various inspirations, that cannot hang together because no understanding of humanity gives them any internal logic. [C-]
“The Leader” premiered at the 2026 Tribeca Festival.
