Remember The Vow?
A two-season docuseries that aired on HBO, The Vow featured former members of the NXIVM cult telling their stories and trying to downplay their own involvement in all of the cult’s crimes. In one of the show’s key scenes, former filmmaker and NXIVM follower Mark Vicente angrily exclaimed that anyone could get brainwashed. Anyone could become a member of a cult.
I have never really believed that.
I’ve sat through several documentaries and docudramas about cults. I have listened to countless interviews with disillusioned former members. One thing that has always really stood out to me is that people who get brainwashed and join cults are usually some of the stupidest, flakiest people in the world. Inevitably, they always say they felt they were missing something in their lives and that they needed a greater purpose. And to that, I say, “Big deal.” If something’s missing from your life, volunteer at a soup kitchen. Don’t give up your identity for a commune. Cults seem to appeal to weak-willed people who want to be told that they’re victims first and individuals last.
I found myself thinking about all of this as I watched 2024’s Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story. Based on a true story, Devil on Campus opens in 2010 with Larry Ray (Billy Zane) showing up at his daughter’s dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College. Larry has just been released from prison, though he claims that he was set up by Rudy Giuliani and former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik. Larry is charismatic and energetic. He has a gift for telling stories that sound like they could potentially be credible as long as you don’t give them too much thought. Larry also has a lot of money and, at the start, he seems to have a generous nature.
Larry is soon living in the dorm room and controlling the lives of both his daughter and her roommates. He can be tough. He can be erratic. But he repeatedly tells all of them that he’s just trying to help them. Larry encourages them to express their emotions and to cry and to have sex with each other. Eventually, he encourages them to live in an off-campus apartment with him, to work (without pay) on his family farm, and finally to work as sex workers. Eventually, some break away from him and some do not. It’s good that some realized the truth, but it’s hard not to be disappointed that it took them so long to do so.
Though a few names have been changed, Devil on Campus sticks close to the facts of the case. The movie works largely due to Billy Zane’s bigger-than-life screen presence. The minute that Zane appears in the film, he dominates every frame. He plays Larry as someone smart enough to know that the way to keep people from questioning you is to just keep talking. Larry instinctively recognizes when someone is too weak-willed or slow-witted to resist being manipulated. Zane’s performance dominates the film. His victims, on the other hand, come across as ciphers, but perhaps that’s a reflection of reality. Regardless of what Mark Vicente claimed in The Vow, not everyone is dumb enough to get brainwashed.
As for the real-life Larry Ray, he’s currently in federal prison. He’s scheduled to be released in 2071, when he will be 111 years old.
