User reviews

There is a lot of good footage, audio recordings, and interviews that help tell the story. The subject matter is fairly interesting, and I do think it's a story worth telling. The problem is that it's disorganized and could use a heavy edit.

Like so many modern docuseries, this feels stretched. The time jumps are odd, and often the scenes feel random and disjointed. You can watch a scene and be left to wonder, "So when did that happen?" because it will be following some footage from 2005 or a phone call recording from 2010. It still works, sort of, but you know it could be so much better if they dropped the fluff and told the story in a direct way.

Painfully slow to watch due to all the repetition and "filler" scenes. I'm convinced that the series should edited down to two or three episodes at most. It's is definitely an interesting topic so my advice.. record everything, fast forward as needed.

As Episodes 1 of "The Vow" (2020 release; 9 episodes of about 60 min. each) opens, we get to know Keith Raniere, who talks about "optimizing people's experience and behavior". We go to "2017" as a guy named Mark confesses that"I was afraid to be attacked if I left the organization", and then the shocking headline as we go to "2019" where Keith Raniere is convicted of sex trafficking. We then go back in time as we get to know Sarah, who meets Mark on a cruise and they hit it off, big time. Mark convinces Sarah to take the organization's (called NXIVM) initiation program (called Executive Success Program). Sarah is skeptical at first but soon finds herself fully on board... At this point we are 10 min. into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: I must admit that I had never heard of this organization, and that the dead-giveaway in the opening scenes of Episode 1 that its leader was convicted last year of sex trafficking made me sit up and take notice. Based on Episode 1, which mostly explores the "teachings" of NXIVM, this to me sounds like another cult organization, not unlike, say, the Church of Scientology. People are brainwashed and/or convince themselves into believing things that sound like utter rubbish to me (of course about "bringing out the best in themselves", etc.). No signs whatsoever so far about any darker side of things, although the preview of Episode 2 makes clear it's not going to be long before we get to that. How does an entire cult buy into this? That is the $64,000 question which we will explore in future episodes for sure. This new documentary series is directed by the long-time (husband and wife) documentarian team of Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim ("Control Room", "The Square"), and once again they deliver what looks to be a fascinating view behind the curtains, in this case of a cult-like organization.

"The Vow" premiered this past weekend on HBO and Episode 1 is now available on HBO On Demand and other streaming services. New episodes air Sunday evenings at 10 pm Eastern. Can't wait to catch future episodes. If you have an interest in the inner workings of cult-like organizations, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

*UPDATE 8/31/30* Episode 2 confirms all the good things and, yes, also scary things about Episode 1. We are now really taking a deep dive into the "high control group" (a/k/a the cult) that is NXIVM, as we learn new terms like "emotion stretching exercise". Yea, you can't make this up! Episode 2 is also where we learn what "the vow" (the title of this documentary series) actually refers to/stands for. No worries, I won't spoil. Just watch...

*UPDATE 9/7/20* Episode 3 takes a deep dive into Sarah's trajectory within the NXIVM cult, and how her close relationship with Lauren may impact Sarah's marriage. We are now knee-deep into the cult side of things and things are getting "weirder and weirderer". I can only imagine how the remaining 6 episodes are going to play out. This is now officially must-see TV (for me anyway).

*UPDATE 11/1/20* Just as "The Vow" came to a conclusion in early October, another NXIVM documentary mini-series debuted on STARZ called "Seduced: Into the NXIVM Cult", directed by Emmy-nominated Cecilia Peck. It focuses far more onto the personal experienced on India Oxenberg, who became a slave in the "DOS" system of NXIVM. While some of this is of course covered in "The Vow", "Seduced" goes into far greater details of the human trafficking that went on within NXIVM , and one has to wonder why "The Vow" only covers it vaguely.

I read a lot of the NDA reviews complaining how this series was drawn out into 9 episodes and should've been much less but I disagree.

The creators bring you along and groom you like the cult, NXCM, did their followers. They start with the intellectual and helpful parts and bring you along until you're in and then they start to reveal the uncomfortable stuff until they finally show you the evil.

Just like the cult, if they showed you the evil day one everyone would leave and the viewer would never understand the lure of the cult and, thus, not sympathize with these people.

I understand people want everything fast, and I get that, but if you've got the time this slow burn is really great.

While the series has plenty of recorded phonecalls, recordings and interviews with people who were involved with - and since escaped - the organisation, the series lack of proper pacing trips it up. There is no straight timeline being followed, but instead it steadily introduces more people and might then go back to previous events we have already seen because these newly introduced figures were also involved in that. This leads to topics switching quite randomly. As such the series might struggle to hold your attention past your innate interest in seeing where things go in the end. In conclusion the series seem to portray events accurately enough, however it meanders too much and doesn't have a defined 'thread' you can follow that will keep you in suspense. I would put this slightly above average 6 episodes in.

This was necessary, I am on episode 8 and I can see why some people feel this has been dragged out , but is it ? No; the point is that these people are still in this and it's all about the how , how they got there happen. How can this happen to sophisticated people with resources. I don't feel it's been stretched out , in fact, the issue for me is binge watching which creates tedium ( it's probably why it's been released weekly) Anyone who walks away thinking it can't happen to them had missed the point imo. This is happening now the fallout is current events , it's no tiger king this involves thousands of people across the globe and i am not expecting resolution by episode 9. I am hopeful but I believe this was meant to take us in the journey of how they got to where that are and the frustrations and obstacles of getting out . There are still people in right now . I

The story of NXIVM is massive. It's impossible for every notable detail to make the final cut. That said, there are some omissions that seem significant. For example, investigative journalist Frank Parlato, who has written extensively about NXIVM over the years, is mentioned in early episodes and characterized as someone who isn't always viewed as credible. But in the seventh episode, Parlato becomes a supporting figure in the series as he helps actress Catherine Oxenberg, whose daughter India refuses to leave NXIVM, in her attempt to get law enforcement involved in the situation. Given all the evidence Parlato has compiled and his willingness to help, he comes across as semi-heroic, albeit eccentric. A visit to his website, the Frank Report, reveals that it's filled with reporting on NXIVM but also posts written by Roger Stone and at least one defense of QAnon, a juxtaposition that caused so much cognitive dissonance in my brain that it turned into a popping-confetti cannon. While it's understandable that Noujaim and Amer decided that a whole sidebar on Parlato would be too distracting, this still raises the question of what other notable information or nuances may have been sliced out of the series.

Ironically, the recent focus in the news on the cultlike believers in QAnon conspiracy theories makes The Vow an especially relevant watch. While NXIVM coaches often preached the notion that trusting one's intuition can be misleading - "Your intuition was just a feeling, a viscera," Bonnie Piesse says in the second episode - the series is a testimony to how vital it is to check one's gut and apply real, unvarnished critical thinking to events unfolding around us. Any of us can potentially have the wool pulled over our eyes by a dude who calls himself Vanguard, or anonymous online posters, or even a president. It's what we do after we realize our vision has been obscured that truly defines whether we're good or bad, and whether we're safe or still in grave danger.

We enjoyed this series quite a bit. Unbelievable how little we knew about this prior to watching

I'm so disturbed how some reviews are absolutely cruel and missing what a review is to provide. This is not a forum to criticize people who had the courage to come forward and own their mistakes. Cults are abundant and they come in many tricky forms. As we look at our society today, especially now, there are too many unhappy and unfulfilled people trying to find purpose. This is a symptom of our diseased culture lauding material gain as success and how social media is chipping away personal dignity via being liked. The Vow reveals anyone can be a victim, regardless of background.

Season one (1) was basically former members who were able to somehow attempted to justify their involvement in a obvious cult. I did not feel sorry for them at all. Too much wasted conversation about how they were duped along with the tears. It was a waste of time. Ideally it was to set the story up but it really could have been done without Vincente, his wife etc.

Season 2 is where the rubber meets the road. Totally different. Gave you a lot more insight and the interviews were from the ones who really mattered. Those are the people who were really traumatized and it was a lot easier to have compassion for them. Season 1 kind of felt more like a rehearsed reality show. Season 2 had me on the edge of my seat at the end of each episode.

Too many episodes... They made 10 "ok" episodes instead of making four really good episodes that had just enough coverage and length.. Instead, it kind of drags on and doesn't really grab me as much due to the repetitiveness of it. It's still pretty good, mainly due to the large collection of recorded calls, but it could have benefited from more brevity.

It's a descent production by hbo and the narrated archive footage from Vincente and his cronies.

But the show is too slow paced like one of their overpriced brainwashing cult workshops. Mostly due to the one episode a week release format hbo utilizes, as opposed to releasing the whole show at once format netflix utilizes. Which can give slower paced shows a somewhat faster pace because you can stay submerged into the show and story line. Every time you get drawn a bit into the vow it ends on some cliff hanger and you have to wait another week to get submerged into the story line again. If it was a faster paced show it would be less of an issue but this show is made mind numbing boring like the nxivm striped sashes workshops, the interactions in the vow are mostly superficial while it's stuffed with fillers and only gets going towards the end of the episodes. Which is when the episode ends and you have to wait for another week to get into it again. The vow itself is a dangling carrot like the nxivm cult stripe path workshop where you get one integrating revelation for every 99% bs you sit through. Wild wild country offers a better insight into cult life and has a better cult soundtrack. These people are indeed kind of special but not from a breed they think they are but a special kind of fools flocking together to fawn over one shoddy perverted fool.

And by the way the vow producers want you to know nxivm is NOT a sex cult if you didn't already know that, it is a multi level marketing pyramid scheme cult.

Its true that the series sometimes repeats itself and its not very chronological accurate, but i actually didnt care i enjoyed all the episodes. I never find it boring for one second, and believe me when i find something boring i never insist. I liked the fact that they gave time for everyone to tell their story. They were relly concerned with having the most "pawns" as possible.

They could be even darkerer, they could have made this orderly in terms of time framing, but i really enjoyed it how it is. Plus the music is good, the directing and editing are great, i liked a lot the cinematography...is a really well made series that will go deep in terms o why these people enjoyed such a nefarious organization. Please give it a watch.

Listening to Keith Raniere will infuriate you because he is incredibly stupid and it is so hard to grasp how people did not see through his nonsense. He is an oaf. My heart breaks for his victims.

Although I found the first season interesting, I agree with most of the reviewers that it was way too long and drawn out - and very repetitive. They should redo that season and rerelease it to live up to the second season.

The second season was ten times better, much less repetitive, and they were smart enough to keep it to 6 episodes.

I originally rated the first season a 2 because of it's major flaws but the second season was profoundly interesting and insightful, especially in the last few episodes. Therefore, I changed my rating to a 10 because it was that good. The first season wasn't a 10 but the second season made up for it.

Seeing Nancy and others' inside take on what happened really helps us understand how people can get caught up in a cult like atmosphere and why it takes a lot of people to convince the few that something was, and still is, seriously wrong with Raniere.

I don't want to give anything away, but the last episode was heartbreaking. I really hope Nancy is able to get part of her life back at some point and have a real relationship with someone to see what it can be like.

I watched this documentary to see why so many people would follow the teachings of Keith Raniere but instead I saw a documentary about Mark Vicente acting like a betrayed boyfriend. It seems that Mark had a bromance with good old Keith. The beginning of the documentary looked like a love story between Mark and Keith. The people who fell for this cult are stupid and/or elitist. The cult members were paying for the "classes" yet could not leave the cult. What where they scared of? It wasn't like they would lose their jobs or livelihood over this cult. The cult members are a bunch of elitists who wanted to feel superior to other individuals. They wanted to be part of an exclusive group but it backfired on them. Notice how very few minorities joined this exclusive group.

Usually when you see documentaries on cults, you get the weird stuff first and it makes it hard to understand how people get into these things. This documentary series brings you into NXIVM as you would if you were discovering it as an interested person, and then a new member, and you get deeper into it before you start learning about the really bizarre stuff, just as the people featured in this series did. Created by 2 extremely clever people, one of whom is a nurse and counselor, the insights NXIVM offered folks are attractive, helpful and at least partially true. For the first time I could see how an intelligent person could get caught up in this. It helps that rather than getting just talking heads looking back on the events, this features a wealth of material from a filmmaker who became the organization's person in charge of media. So we see things as they happened, we get clips from their official training videos, we get interviews with the cult leader and can see firsthand his charm and subtle manipulations. And we get recordings of actual phone calls where people are not always as guarded. We see the gradual dawning on the higher ups who are the focus of this series as they confront just what they have let themselves get enmeshed in. If you've ever wondered how smart people could possibly find themselves in a cult, this will help you understand those who get taken in by plausible lies fashioned by subtly manipulating psychological truths.

It's a solid good story but it would have been best to tell it in a more dynamic way in 90 minutes or 2 hours max. The desire to turn this into 9 episodes Is poor storytelling and just makes it unbearable to watch after the third episode.

Thorough and compelling, however the series would have done well with five episodes instead of nine. By episode #4 viewers don't need any more convincing yet the testimonials keep coming. I started skipping ahead just to get through it.

If any of our millennial reviewers (in residence) believe that the people who got caught in NXIVM's web are stupid or simply bourgeois people in need of a hobby-think again! Either some of the viewers have been asleep for the past ten years (NXIVM was all over the media and the subject of a year-long podcast about a year ago) or so, or simply have the empathy of a Social Media Influencer. However the first episode shows NXIVM in a light that is mostly benign that anyone judging (as WASPy really??) the participants has to be mean spirited or uneducated.

What happens after? A mix of Scientology-like mentality and sex trafficking coupled with manipulation that can make any so-called logical (cult-proof) individuals fall into a trap like 'The Vow' so, very inadvertently. Unfortunately so many of us "smart" people are only a sliver...a weakness away from losing all critical thinking. Brace yourself!