You don’t have to be a mediocre white man to start a cult, but it certainly makes the longevity easier. 2025’s Chattanooga Film Festival virtual lineup had a lot on offer exploring the infliction of and process of healing from shared trauma. Perhaps the most heartfelt feature I saw to capture this theme was the fest’s Best Feature winner, writer-director Cassie Keet’s ABIGAIL BEFORE BEATRICE.
When I say “heartfelt”, I don’t mean it here in the traditionally positive sense. Rather, ABIGAIL BEFORE BEATRICE is more of a slow-burning gut punch. The heartbreaks it has in store are varied and intimate. In it, we follow Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), an isolated woman making her way through life after leaving a mysterious cult. She’s quiet and awkward and clearly in many ways struggling to dodge the prying eyes, ears, and mouths of people who only want to know about her life before. But it’s also made clear that she has at least a couple of people in her life now who look out for her.
So, when fellow escapee Abigail (Riley Dandy) asks to meet up and informs Beatrice that their former leader Grayson (Shayn Herndon) is out of prison early, naturally Beatrice begins confront the spirals of her past. What unfolds is horrific in many ways, and masterfully played by Olivia Taylor Dudley in particular.
It’s likely a safe assumption that most of us reading this have some familiarity with cult media and depictions of cult dynamics, whether from true crime media or fictional depictions throughout history in horror and dramatic genres. Cults are a rich field of human ego and psychology to explore, but though a handful are routinely shown enough to be household names, it feels somewhat rare to see compassionate depictions of how being in this kind of scenario impacts every kind of victim — whether that be the victim of a crime orchestrated and/or carried out by the leader, or a member themselves.
ABIGAIL BEFORE BEATRICE does a phenomenal job showcasing not only the subtle prey-predator dynamic at work in recruiting new members into the fold, but the ways control is maintained and the mental gymnastics at work that so often occur when victims of abuse both realize and are forced to navigate survival within an abusive relationship. Cults are simply an abusive relationship taken to the extreme, in which (usually) a single person positions themselves as a godlike core-figure among any number of followers. Every thought you have is formed by the hands of the leader. Every understanding of the world you might have had before, wiped clean or cast as a lie in the face of one person’s idea of the truth. To them, it’s a game of control, but to you it becomes an all-consuming way of life.
What makes ABIGAIL BEFORE BEATRICE’s depiction so effective and horrific is that it isn’t really trying to emulate any particular existing cult for which we have a cultural shorthand reference point. Grayson is just some guy with a farm in the middle of nowhere and a penchant for preying on women and girls he spots as particularly vulnerable. Removing a reference point makes him, his girls, and the events of the film completely unpredictable. But this story also isn’t really about him. He’s just some guy with an ego the size of the Milky Way. Rather, it’s about the way his thought processes and actions impacted Abigail and Beatrice, individually and together. We see their experience of their time in the cult through their respective alternating viewpoints, with their own voices doing the telling. What is revealed is a devastating look into not just how commonly evil people can be to others to pin them into particular narratives — everything from the rituals they must participate in to the way they are given names is structured to minimize and uncenter the women in Grayson’s cult — but also how easy it is to fall into the trap of an idealized world.
All you need is someone to tell you they see you. That they value you. It doesn’t have to be true to them. It just has to be true to you.
But you don’t deserve the pain of the trap they set out for you.
You deserve good things.
Tags: Abigail Before Beatrice, Cassie Keet, Chattanooga Film Festival, Chattanooga Film Festival 2025, Cults, Film Festivals, Katelyn Nelson, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Riley Dandy, Shayn Herndon
No Comments