The Family (2019)

From adulterous senators to anti-LGBTQ European demagogues to African gangster-statesmen, The Family shows over and over how The Fellowship was co-opted by politicians to curry favor with the evangelical power structure. ... What The Family doesn’t do is explain why The Fellowship exists in the first place. Why were so many upstanding men (and, um, some women in there, somewhere) not only drawn to Fellowship work but committed to it for years?

Moss embraces the stylistic trappings of conspiratorial exposés to tell his story—dramatic reenactments, a plinky and faintly menacing piano score, selective splicing of clips featuring Maria Butina and Muammar Gaddafi. And yet, as the series continues, it’s unclear whether the Fellowship is as powerful as it would like to be, or whether its aura of mystery is its most distinct asset.

Clearly, The Family is trying to run a lot of threads through the needle here, and director Jesse Moss, who directed the excellent documentary The Overnighters, lets some of them hang a little too loosely. ... It wasn’t that there’s no “there” there — there’s more than enough “there” — but Moss leaves out some crucial pieces of the puzzle that would make it complete.