Culler and Raite and their leads capture the ways the heavy fog of psychological manipulation can linger even for people taking active steps to dispel it. At times, it’s like they’re reciting tidbits from the NXIVM Wikipedia page.īut an excellent cast and some skillful direction goes a long way toward making “The Aviary” feel genuinely revealing. If anything, the movie’s biggest weakness is that much of the running time consists of Jillian and Blair’s exhausted conversations out in the wilderness, in which they recall what they went through in the cult: being forced to lose weight, to share secrets and to brand each other’s skin. The writer-director team of Chris Cullari and Jennifer Raite (making a strong feature filmmaking debut) don’t disguise the connections between Skylight and NXIVM. As they flee the group’s charismatic leader, Seth (Chris Messina), the starving fugitives begin to hallucinate - and then to doubt each other’s motives.
If you’ve watched any of the documentaries about the NXIVM cult, you’ll recognize a lot of the details in the intense escape drama “The Aviary.” Malin Akerman plays Jillian, who as the movie begins is trudging through the desert with Blair (Lorena Izzo), a woman she recruited into Skylight: a wellness organization that manipulates its members through deprivation and abuse, NXIVM-style.
