Rhona Rees – Through the Shattered Lens

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.

The most interesting thing about In The Blink Of An Eye is who directed it.

Andrew Stanton got his start at PIXAR, directing films like A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, and my personal favorite, WALL-E. (He also directed Toy Story 5, which will be coming out later this year.) Stanton’s PIXAR films were some of the best to come out of that legendary studio. Especially when it came to WALL-E, he showed not only his skill as a visual storyteller but also his ability to craft compelling narratives that sold their message without necessarily feeling preachy. (If you didn’t cry while watching WALL-E, you don’t have a heart.) Stanton’s first live action film was John Carter, a legendary flop that was more betrayed by its producers than its director. After the failure of John Carter, Stanton redeemed himself by directing episodes of shows like Stranger Things, Better Call Saul, and For All Mankind.

In The Blink Of An Eye is Stanton’s second live action film. It’s an earnest film. One can tell that both Stanton and the film’s screenwriter, Colby Day, felt they had something important to say. (Day’s screenplay appeared on the 2016 Black List, which is the annual list of the “best” unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. Unfortunately, as anyone who has sat through Cedar Rapids can tell you, merely getting on the Black List is not a guarantee that a script will be transformed into a good or even watchable movie.) Like WALL-E, it’s a film with a message. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as watchable or compelling as Stanton’s animated work.

It’s a film that tells three interconnected stories, each one taking place at a different time in human history. In 45,000 BC, a family of cave people struggle to survive and to start a civilization on the beach of a largely untouched Earth. In the 21st century, anthropologist Claire (Rashida Jones) falls in love with Greg (Daveed Diggs) and eventually, they have a son who inherits their shared interest in science and their appreciation for Paleolithic culture. (Don’t let Claire hear you suggest that Neanderthals were dumb.) Meanwhile, in the far future, Coakley (Kate McKinnon) lives on a spaceship where her only companion is an AI named Rosco (voiced by Rhona Rees). When Coakley’s mission appears to be in jeopardy, Rosco suggests that the only solution might be Coakley shutting Rosco down. The stories share a connection, one that most audiences will guess before the film gets around to revealing it.

As I said, In The Blink Of An Eye is an earnest and well-intentioned film. (Colby Day also wrote the screenplay for the underrated Spaceman, a film that dealt with similar themes.) And yet, it really doesn’t work. The pacing is off. This is a 90 minute film that feels considerably longer. The stories themselves are not particularly compelling. The cave people are well-acted and I appreciated the fact that they spoke they’re own language as opposed to crude English but they were also way too clean. For a group of people who lived without soap, toothpaste, razors, and deodorant, they were way too physically pleasant to be credible. Rashida Jones and Daveed Diggs are sweet when they’re falling in love but then they become rather insufferable once they start a family. As for the future scenes, Kate McKinnon has never been a particularly consistent actress and that trend continues here. She gets outacted by the voice of Rosco. (Having the AI be more likable than the actual human worked well in 2001 but it’s far less effective here.)

As I said, it was well-intentioned but, in the end, it just left me wanting to watch WALL-E again.