Louis Theroux: Surviving America's Most Hated Family

A cult indoctrinates its members, who come to sincerely believe in its doctrines, however strange they may appear to outsiders. A troll spins arguments in bad faith for the primary purpose of winding other people up. The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, however, is a strange hybrid of the two, a group of true believers who claim it is God's will that, for example, they attend the funerals of their enemies and celebrate. Those enemies include "fags", of course, but they also vigorously celebrated the death of the more conventional celebrity preacher Billy Graham. This would be laughable if it wasn't clear the cult is deadly serious. This is film-maker Louis Theroux's third visit to Westboro, and he abandons his normal even-handedness in the face of their cartoon evil. It's fair to say he doesn't get very far, and even the ex-members he meets are not that enlightening, precisely because the church is so inherently uninteresting, its doctrine as banal as it is horrific, its leaders strikingly uncharismatic. Perhaps all one can say is it's a weird world we live in; and some people are sincerely devoted to making it worse.

A part of me was left wondering what the point in this third documentary was because it was somewhat similar to the second ("America's Most Hated Family in Crisis"). The main difference is Fred Phelps had died and he wanted to understand why he was excommunicated - nothing that wasn't known to the public already was revealed by current WBC members or those that left WBC. Since his death, the church had already started to moderate, but the reasons as to why was never explained by the WBC members.

It was disappointing that there was less of Shirley Phelps-Roper and none of Margie Phelps, both of whom are very charismatic, intelligent and interesting women to listen to. There was more of Steve Drain, unfortunately, and he's one of the more dull and annoying members of WBC that has assumed a leadership position. Would've been nice to see the young men of the church and how they're doing, especially the young Phelps-Roper guys, who were kids in the first two documentaries.