‘The Leader’ review: Michael Gallagher weaves gripping, grim drama about Heaven’s Gate cult

Dir/scr: Michael Gallagher. Canada/US. 2026. 104mins 

In 1997, an American religious cult known as Heaven’s Gate committed mass suicide, with 39 members taking their own lives. The Leader ponders what could have driven these people to such an extreme act, but what makes this psychological drama so unsettling is its refusal to provide easy answers. Tim Blake Nelson and Vera Farmiga are stellar as the group’s leaders, who brainwashed their followers into believing that, by avoiding human temptations, they would find salvation when Jesus returned in a UFO to bring them home. Writer-director Michael Gallagher lets the audience sit in the inexplicability of this cult’s powerful hold over its disciples, tapping into the disturbing seductiveness of radically unconventional dogma.

Dramatises the group’s gradual progression toward its fateful end with a grim inevitability

After premiering at Tribeca, the film screens in Fantasia’s Horizons section. Further festival play is assured — The Leader will show in Melbourne in August — and this indie’s star power will attract viewers. Acclaimed arthouse fare such as Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Master have examined fictional cults, and the 2020 documentary series Heaven’s Gate: The Cult Of Cults previously chronicled this group’s lasting legacy. Strong reviews should lead to modest theatrical distribution. 

Spanning the early 1970s to Heaven’s Gate’s mass suicide in 1997, The Leader introduces us to Marshall Herff Applewhite (Nelson), a troubled music teacher who met spiritually adrift married nurse Bonnie Lu Nettles (Farmiga) when he was rushed to the hospital after downing a bottle of pills. Learning that her husband is having an affair, Nettles finds herself drawn to Applewhite’s confident assertion that he has been chosen to lead humanity to transcend their “vehicle” — his term for the human body — and reconnect with Jesus’s plan for them. Soon, Applewhite and Nettles attract disciples who willingly accept his gospel that they be celibate, abandon their friends and family, and live an ascetic existence.

Gallagher, whose 2018 dramedy Funny Story debuted at Slamdance, walks a delicate tonal tightrope, wanting the audience to be consistently alarmed, yet intrigued, by Heaven’s Gate’s abnormal behaviour. The film’s approach is epitomised by Nelson’s and Farmiga’s controlled performances as true believers who clearly have lost connection to reality. With their bowl haircuts and bland clothes, Applewhite and Nettles could easily be mocked as oddballs, but the actors create an internal logic for their characters that never makes them sympathetic or relatable but does suggest why desperate, often damaged souls would find comfort in their self-assured message. 

Composer Joseph Bishara creates a minimalist aural environment that is always vaguely disconcerting. The Leader is neither a horror film nor a thriller, but its rumbling soundscape, aided by cinematographer Ben Mullen’s intentionally drab interior lighting and spooky night photography, gives off a palpable sense that all is not right in this world. That impression is initially acutely felt by two new recruits, Michelle (Grace Caroline Currey) and David (Simon Rex), who seek to join the group but are taken aback by the leadership’s unreasonable demands. (Heaven’s Gate promoted unfashionable haircuts and unflattering clothing so followers would not sully their “vehicles” by engaging in sexual activity.) But in short order, Michelle and David comply, happily giving away their personal freedom in the name of blind obedience.

Those who have seen fictional or true-life portraits of cults will not be surprised by Gallagher’s depiction of charismatic leaders and sheep-like disciples. Mixing an unsettling awkwardness with a paternal smile, Nelson ably embodies Applewhite’s creepy serenity, even if audiences will recognise this sort of self-proclaimed saviour from other such films. But what animates The Leader is Gallagher’s sincere curiosity about Heaven’s Gate’s inner workings, not so much to explain the cult’s suicidal rationale but to recreate this compelling (albeit bizarre) cloistered community in which Applewhite’s teachings flourished. All living in the same house together, the followers relegated to bunk beds as if they were away at a summer camp, this cult may be transfixingly strange, but Gallagher dramatises the group’s gradual progression toward its fateful end with a grim inevitability.

Among the supporting cast, Jim Parsons is a standout as Warren, a fiercely loyal lieutenant to Applewhite who feels threatened by the arrival of the hunky David. (The Leader tactfully weaves Applewhite’s closeted homosexuality into the story without ever making it just a cheap joke.) Warren’s allegiance to Applewhite will eventually lead to the film’s riveting third act, in which Gallagher switches aspect ratios, settling on a constricting boxy frame for Heaven’s Gate’s final days. Most viewers are fortunate never to have fallen under the sway of a deadly cult, but The Leader forces us to immerse in such groups’ terrible gravitational pull.