The New Documentary That Asks If We've All Joined a Cult

There's a moment early in the new documentary "Naza" where a former member sits in silence for a long time before answering a simple question. The interviewer waits. The camera keeps rolling. And you realize you're not watching a film about someone else. You're watching a mirror. The film, directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, explores the Nazarene movement, a fast-growing spiritual community that has quietly spread through American suburbs over the past decade. On paper, it sounds harmless. Small groups meeting in living rooms. Potluck dinners. A shared sense of purpose. But the documentary peels back the surface to reveal something more troubling: members surrendering their savings, cutting off family members, and abandoning careers at the urging of a charismatic leader few outsiders have ever heard of. What makes "Naza" so unsettling isn't the shouting or the scandal. It's the calm. The members interviewed aren't wild-eyed fanatics. They're your neighbors. Your coworkers. Your kid's soccer coach. They speak in measured, reasonable tones about why they gave away their retirement accounts. Why they stopped speaking to their parents. Why they believe the outside world is a spiritual wasteland. This is the part that should keep you up at night. We like to think we'd never fall for something like this. We're too smart. Too skeptical. Too online. But the documentary makes a persuasive case that the very things that make modern American life feel unbearable — the loneliness, the economic anxiety, the constant churn of meaningless work — are exactly what makes us vulnerable. The Nazarene movement didn't invent a new need. It just found a way to fill a hole that churches, unions, bowling leagues, and even families used to fill. And here's where the film stops being about a fringe group and starts being about us. The same dynamics show up everywhere. Wellness influencers who demand total loyalty. Multi-level marketing schemes that promise community and deliver debt. Political movements that ask you to cut off the cousin who voted the other way. We're not joining cults, we tell ourselves. We're just finding our people. But "Naza" suggests the line isn't as clear as we'd like. The documentary doesn't offer easy answers, which is probably why it's been making the rounds on streaming platforms with little fanfare but steady buzz. It's not a sensational expose. It's a slow, uncomfortable question mark. What the film leaves you with is a question about consent and coercion, about freedom and belonging, about how much of ourselves we're willing to hand over in exchange for feeling less alone. The former members interviewed don't come across as stupid. They come across as human. And that's the scariest thing of all. The Nazarene movement may be small, but it's a symptom of something larger. A society that produces millions of isolated, anxious people will always produce movements willing to absorb them — for a price. "Naza" doesn't just document one group's rise. It holds up a mirror to a country that keeps creating the conditions for the next one.