The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin

I had stumbled onto this good documentary on HBOMax and had no idea this Church of God likes skinny people existed. Run by a questionable woman using Christianity as her prop to turn out clones of herself and her beliefs, Gwen Shamblin, she operated for decades under this horrific religious guise. Families suffered, relationship suffered in ways I hadn't seen before.

Physical abuse of children. Forced pregnancies. Forced Divorces. Forced weight loss. Etc. All under the name of God, but you'll find that SHE was taking the god moniker for herself, and these folks followed - to a point.

And that is what this documentary puts across effectively.

This documentary also gets across that Gwen Shamblin-Lara and her Church of Heavenly Weight Loss, is also a cautionary tale as it seems so successful as we watch her and those in her orbit run amok with her lavish lifestyle

This tale ends unexpectedly tragic for all the main members and it's a doozy. And their end may make you think whether you're a believer of Christianity or not, that their God doesn't appreciate being mocked.

This certainly takes you for a ride. The first episode was a little slow but overall good, the second episode was more captivating and informative, and the third episode had my heart strings pulled in every direction.

Interesting documentary. I wish the structure was more in order as it was a bit all over the place, but there was a lot of information and I enjoyed it. It makes me so sad that people get sucked into cults like this. I feel so sorry for all of the children, especially Joseph.

I wish we got to hear how the people who left the Church were able to do it and what happened afterward.

I wonder if God brought the plane down...awkward!

Looking forward to the new episodes next year.

The documentary jumps a little all over the place at times, but as a whole it's done really well. This cult seems like hell and those that run it are experts at exploitation and cruelty; as are most cult leaders. It's sad that media outlets like talk shows, including Larry King, gave this woman any sort of attention. At first I thought she just had some strange obsession with her church community being skinny, but there is so much more to it. She's hurt children and adults alike; nothing about this lifestyle is loving or caring. This documentary is captivating and I'd recommend it.

It's a good series but it could be S'much better with some editing. But it seems that all documentary series' now churn out twice as many episodes as they should. I don't know if it's because they want to stretch these stories out the way the series Dexter took 4 season's worth of material into 9 seasons, or if they just don't want to hire an editor. This is another series that would thrive as 3 episodes. But it IS interesting and well done.