HBO’s The Vow spent nine hours detailing the horrific abuses perpetrated by Keith Raniere via his NXIVM sex cult, as well as the efforts of key members—in particular Mark Vicente, Bonnie Piesse, Sarah Edmondson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames—to escape the organization and bring his crimes to light. There were horrors aplenty in that prolonged 2020 non-fiction affair, highlighted by Raniere convincing women to brand their pubic areas with his initials. Yet those who can’t get enough of the predator’s wretchedness will discover a whole new batch of atrocities committed by the manipulative self-help guru in The Vow Part II, a six-part follow-up (Oct. 17, HBO) that revisits his trial through a variety of prisms, none more revealing than that of NXIVM co-founder and “prefect” Nancy Salzman, who participates at length in the production. Prepare to be shocked, disgusted, and infuriated all over again.
The Vow Part II’s main throughline is the prosecution of Raniere, Salzman, her daughter Lauren, and Smallville actress Allison Mack by Eastern District of New York Assistant Attorney Moira Penza on a wealth of charges that included racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, attempted sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy. Despite the best efforts of his defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo (whose commentary here grows less confident as the verdict nears), those crimes netted Raniere a 120-year sentence.
The real hook of Jehane Noujaim’s docuseries—helmed, unlike its predecessor, without her partner/husband Karim Amer—is Salzman’s commentary, during which she attempts to justify her motives, investigates the manipulation she and Lauren suffered at the hands of Raniere, and grapples with her own culpability in this monstrous endeavor. Salzman is far from blameless in the creation and operation of Raniere’s systems of coercion and abuse, and she doesn’t shy away from her role in NXIVM, defending herself as someone who sought to better students’ lives while also wrestling with the idea that what she built was, ultimately, devised by Raniere to satisfy his demented desires.
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The core impression left by The Vow Part II is that Raniere didn’t just torment, torture and psychologically warp those in his orbit; he went one step further by turning his victims into victimizers. Be it with regard to the Salzmans or Mack, Raniere used his “curriculum” to prey upon people’s insecurities, shortcomings and fears, breaking them down and then building them back up in his perverted image. Every teaching was predicated on deflection, turning things on their head so that individuals were constantly told that—in their emotional responses and verbal reactions to situations—they were to blame, and that they could only right themselves (in ways both big and small) by doing as Raniere commanded. For all his talk about morality, ethics, responsibility and trust, he cared only about twisting people into knots and making himself the sole (and always faultless) sage who could deliver them from their failings.
As before, Noujaim’s storytelling is at once comprehensive and a bit diffuse, doubling back on moments in a manner that simultaneously reinforces vital points and renders the proceedings slightly repetitive. She employs a familiar array of formal devices, mixing archival videos, expressionistic graphics (for phone recordings), and animated court-sketch sequences that are accompanied by audio recreations of testimony. Additionally, there’s a raft of original interviews, not only with Salzman but with The New York Post reporter Emily Saul and members of “The NXIVM Five,” a group of Raniere acolytes who believe—even as his offenses are exposed to the world—that he’s being railroaded, and that they must fight for his exoneration. Meanwhile, NXIVM’s work with Tourette syndrome, which Marc Elliott claims was miraculously successful and Isabella Constantino suggests was less so, complicates, however briefly, the idea that the outfit caused only harm.
The Vow Part II’s main contribution is engendering varying degrees of sympathy for those like the Salzmans and Mack, if only because Noujaim’s docuseries illustrates that Raniere coerced every woman in his orbit to do his bidding—including creating DOS, the secret sorority in which the branding, sex abuse and mistreatment occurred (all facilitated by the demand that participants, known as “slaves,” hand over damning “collateral” to their “masters,” so they could be perpetually blackmailed). The director doesn’t excuse these women for their crimes against their friends and colleagues, but she does explicate Raniere’s fundamental role in orchestrating everything on a micro and macro level—how the decisions he made and commands he gave were designed, implicitly or explicitly, to afford him domination over his acolytes, whom he could then exploit for sex.
Speaking of which: there’s so much ugliness in The Vow Part II that it’s difficult to even itemize it. Noujaim reveals—as was proven in court—that Raniere planned a sex dungeon for his DOS disciples (replete with a “Good Boy Wireless Vibrating Remote Puppy Plug,” which stuns Salzman); he forced one young Mexican victim, Daniela, who joined NXIVM at 16, to have an abortion, and then told her it would be beneficial for her weight; he confined Daniela to a barren room for two years; he left victim Pam Cafritz, who was dying of cancer, lying in her excrement for hours while he ate breakfast; and, possibly worst of all, he raped (and took pornographic pictures of) Daniela’s youngest sister Camila when she was 15, and eventually groomed her into an abuser herself. This, plus all sorts of other grossness—brainwashing, sleeping with multiple sisters (once, almost at the same time), and trafficking women for sex—turns the material into an in-depth portrait of evil.
With Raniere behind bars for the rest of his life, the NXIVM saga would seem to be at a close. In its final passages, though, The Vow Part II conveys that his legacy lives on both in the (literal and figurative) scars of those who survived the cult, and in staunch supporters such as Elliott, Michele Hatchette and Battlestar Galactica actress Nicki Clyne, who persist in rallying to his cause. In the faces of those individuals, Noujaim’s docuseries proves that Raniere’s horrid crimes were only possible because he first tricked so many into thinking that he was a kind, benevolent God who could do no wrong and had to be obeyed at all costs. Far from liberating his charges, he imprisoned them in mental cages—and if The Vow Part II is any indication, not all have yet to break free.
