Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult Review – a horribly fascinating look at an invitation-only church | Television

Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult contains many sinister, brash, and sensational components. They’re a loosely affiliated group of TikTok dancers in Los Angeles who sign up with 7M, a management company that’s also a private, invitation-only church run by a pastor named Robert Shinn. Many of the dancers’ friends and family members now believe they joined a cult, and accounts from former members suggest they have good reason to suspect it. But it takes its many stranger-than-fiction elements and turns them into a story that is unusually sensitive, at least for Netflix, and also desperately sad.

Director Derek Doneen uses the Wilking sisters as an entry point into what begins as a story about the spectacle of social media and ambitious young people. Miranda and Melanie Wilking grew up in a working-class home in Detroit and dreamed of becoming professional dancers. There are amateur films showing them as little children, dancing in front of the television; later, as they pursued careers in the dance world, they realized that social media could help them gain exposure. Eventually, together, they amassed over 3.3 million followers on TikTok.

Melanie, who speaks candidly about her sister throughout this captivating triptych, explains that social media isn’t really optional in her world. During auditions, she says, “they ask you how many followers you have.” Measurements matter. The framing of social media here – TikTok mainly, but Instagram a little – is fascinating. The dancers with a large following speak of this ephemeral fame in vague terms, as a means of generating income, without really explaining how this money is earned. Krunk dancer Kevin “Konkrete” Davis, former member of 7M, says he was a “starving artist” and lived out of his car, but social media made him feel like he could get paid to his art. Another dancer and ex-member, Kailea Gray, says she didn’t want to think about brand deals and sponsorship: “I just wanted to create.” »

Robert Shinn, pastor of Shekinah Church and founder of 7M, which he calls a “talent management company,” seems to have seen opportunity in this particular combination of creative ambition, relative poverty and a lack of know-how or commercial desire among young people. Several TikTok dancers have affiliated with 7M, allowing Shinn to manage and manage their brand deals, for example. He provided them with an affordable, aesthetically pleasing place to live and a comfortable environment to create content while encouraging them to join his church, attend his services regularly, and devote themselves to God – and, as a “man of God”, to consecrate themselves to him.

This begins to take on a more traditional cult documentary form, as the extent to which Shinn and Shekinah have integrated themselves into the members’ lives becomes apparent. According to former members’ testimonies and Shinn’s recordings, the Church encourages members to “die to self” and their families. Although it is couched in flowery language about resurrection and rebirth, to outsiders it can sound a lot like the old fundamentalist tactic of cutting people off from those who love them in order to strengthen their ties to their new system of belief. It gets darker and darker as the episodes progress and create a bigger picture. Shinn denies the abuse allegations, but those interviewed here speak from their own experiences within the Church and offer another side of the story.

Those who follow some of the major players online will have seen this play out on social media. Mélanie had to post a video explaining why she and her sister no longer dance together. Miranda, now married to 7M member James “BDash” Derrick and called Miranda Derrick, posts to deny that she is unsafe or part of a cult. The girls’ parents, Dean and Kelly, joined Melanie on a live stream to accuse the church of brainwashing their daughter. For me, one of the most moving moments, among many others, comes when Miranda finally agrees to meet her parents, after cutting off almost all contact with them, and then broadcasts it live to her subscribers, as if to prove that they are the best. issue. They tell her they love her and miss her.

As an image of the zeitgeist, it’s horribly fascinating. It is more difficult than ever to distinguish spectacle from reality. But it reaches its climax when taken from a human perspective and shows the effects of the Church on those who left it behind and on the families of those who did not leave it. I just found one aspect difficult to understand: Shinn is recorded talking about how famous the church is and how everyone will know about 7M. Watching this, I thought that if they hadn’t done it before, they definitely would now.