The Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo is the subject of the documentary AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, that world premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. In 1995 , the cult carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack that killed thirteen people and injured thousands more.
The documentary, based on the book The Cult at the End of the World by David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, traces the shocking evolution of the group into a terrorist organization stockpiling weapons of mass destruction from the collapsed Soviet Union.
Directed by Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto, AUM: The Cult at the End of the World opens in theaters on March 19 and on VOD on March 28th.
In 1995 the world was horrified when the release of a deadly nerve gas in Tokyo’s crowded subway system killed thirteen people and injured thousands more. But what came next was even more unbelievable: The attack was the work of a doomsday cult named Aum Shinrikyo, led by a man named Shoko Asahara —a well-known cultural figure in Japan who had first appeared on television as a charismatic guru-like figure. How could this one-time yoga teacher have become a killer who would order a mass chemical attack on civilians?
In AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, directors Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto shine a bright light on a terrifying story that is little known today, even in Japan. The documentary details the increasing eccentricity and darkness of Asahara and members of Aum Shinrikyo, who, even before the Tokyo subway attack, had targeted and murdered people they considered their enemies.
Braun and Yanagimoto’s documentary traces the shocking descent of a spiritual group into a terroristic organization stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. The film includes a wealth of historical footage, as well as interviews with the courageous and tenacious lawyers, journalists and parents who were willing to take on the cult during a period when Japan’s police and mass media were looking the other way. In a time when extremism is on the rise across the globe and there is no shortage of groups hardening around often-bizarre beliefs, AUM: The Cult at the End of the World arrives as a potent reminder of just how dangerous unchecked fanaticism can be.
In their review, the Playlist graded the film a B+, writing, “‘Aum’ provides frustratingly few answers for why Aum believed they needed to attack the Tokyo subway system with a military-grade nerve agent first developed by the Nazis or what they thought this would accomplish. The filmmakers show the attack on the Aum compound largely through a ghostly montage of contemporaneous television footage and radio dispatch audio. This has the effect of amplifying the terror while making it feel less immediate. An astute and fright-filled story, ‘Aum’ is limited by the unknowability of its subjects, registering as a spooky echo from a distant era.”
Watch the trailer for AUM: The Cult at the End of the World