Andrew Marshall, Aum Shinriko, AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, Ben Braun, Chiaki Yanagimoto, David Kaplan, documentaries, Eiko Nagaoka, film festivals, Fumihiro Joyu, Hiroyuki Nagaoka, Japan, Mika Hosokawa, movies, reviews, Seiich Takeuchi, Shoko Egawa, Sundance, Sundance Film Festival, Taro Takmoto, true crime, Yoshiyuki Kono, Yuji Nakamura
March 22, 2025
by Carla Hay
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World”
Directed by Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto
Some language in Japanese with subtitles
Culture Representation: The documentary film “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” features a predominantly Japanese group of people (with some white people) talking about the Aum Shinrikyo cult, based in Japan and led by Shoko Asahara.
Culture Clash: Aum Shinrikyo started in 1983 as a yoga/meditation group, but by 1995, several members of the cult were convicted of murdering others for cult-motivated reasons.
Culture Audience: “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in finding out more about a sinister cult that might not be well-known outside of Japan.
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” is an expected cautionary tale about a group that started out as harmless and turned into a dangerous and deadly cult. This grim and somewhat tedious documentary adequately tells the disturbing story about the Aum Shinriko cult but doesn’t give much new information. It would be a better documentary with tighter editing and more original investigations from the filmmakers.
Directed by Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto, “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” is their feature-film directorial debut. “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary sticks to a standard formula of mixing archival footage with interviews that were done exclusively for the documentary. “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” is at least partially based on the 1996 non-fiction book “The Cult at the End of the World,” written by David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, who are both interviewed in the documentary.
The Aum Shinriko cult was launched in Japan in 1983, by a self-proclaimed guru named Shoko Asahara, whose birth name was Chizuo Matsumoto. The group’s purpose was originally yoga and meditation. The group began calling itself Aum Shinriko in 1987. Aum Shinriko attracted mostly young people and lived in communes. The group eventually bought land in a remote town near Mount Fuji called Kamikuishiki in 1989, when Aum Shinriko had about 3,000 followers.
As far as cults go, Aum Shinriko checked a lot of boxes because this was yet another cult that isolated its members in a remote area, where the members were supposed to live in a commune-like setting. Asahara encouraged members to have a lack of sleep, lack of food, and lack of personal hygiene. Over time, Asahara began to make wild claims about himself and the cult, such as saying that joining the cult would give people superpowers.
“The Cult at the End of the World” co-author Marshall is a London-born journalist who lived in Japan and was a deputy editor at Tokyo Journal in the late 1980s. In the documentary, Marshall describes the cult’s living quarters as looking like a cross between “factories and prison camps.” And although the cult was in a rural area, the cult members were disruptive enough to be considered “bad neighbors” because the cult members would chant loudly during all hours of the day and night. The cult also would leave a lot of garbage strewn around.
In other words, Aum Shinriko was a cult that did not keep a low profile. Aum Shinriko also had books and graphic novels to promote the cult. Cult leader Asahara sought out publicity and often gave media interviews. Asahara called himself a messiah and the reincarnation of Buddha. He was also preaching doomsday prophecies and had bold political ambitions for himself and his cult.
A turning point for Aum Shinriko was in 1990, when the cult formed its own political group. Asahara and 24 other members of the cult were political candidates for Japan’s House of Representatives, but these cult members lost in all of these elections. This humiliating defeat apparently set Asahara over the edge. Instead of wanting to join the Japanese government, the group changed its agenda to wanting to destroy the Japanese government.
By 1991, after Russia switched from a Communist regime to a democratic-resembling government, members of Aum Shinriko went to Russia to recruit new members. Aum Shinriko also began to amass weapons and illegally purchased nerve gas called Sarin. What started out as a seemingly benign lifestyle community had turned into a full-fledged terrorist group.
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” begins with Aum Shinriko’s most notorious crime: On March 20, 1995, Aum Shinriko instigated a Sarin attack on five subway cars on a subway train going to Kasumigaseki Station in Tokyo. The attack murdered 13 people and injured thousands.
Asahara was arrested on May 16, 1995. By October of 1995, Aum Shinriko disbanded. Asahara and several Aum Shinriko members were eventually convicted of murder. Asahara was sentenced to death in 2004. He and other convicted Aum Shinriko murderers were executed in 2018. All of this information is dutifully chronicled in the documentary.
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” also takes a closer look beyond the 1995 nerve gas attack and examines the human toll taken on people who went up against the cult. People tried to get loved ones out of the cult but did not get much help from authorities because the people in the cult were considered adults who were there of their own free will. Journalists, lawyers and other people who were investigating the cult found themselves on the receiving end of harassment or worse from cult members.
Although it’s impossible to know how many murders are linked to Aum Shinriko, the documentary mentions three particular murders that are definitely linked to Aum Shinriko. A Yokohama-based attorney named Tsutsumi Sakamoto represented family members who wanted their loved ones to leave the cult. Sakamoto was investigating the cult when he, his wife and their son disappeared in 1989. An Aum Shinriko badge was found in the family’s apartment. Their murdered bodies were found in 1995, after an Aum Shinriko member provided authorities with a map to find the bodies.
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” has an interview with a former member named Mika Hosokawa, who joined the cult in 1988, when she was 22 years old. At this time in her life, she describes herself as “spiritually stalled” and looking for a change in her life. Married couple Hiroyuki Nagaoka and Eiko Nagaoka say in documentary interviews that they spent a fortune trying to get their unnamed son out of the cult. They describe their son as being lured into Aum Shinriko by the cult’s book “How to Develop Psychic Powers.”
One of the most compelling interviews intthe documentary is with Fumihiro Joyu, who was a high-ranking member of the Aum Shinriko cult. Joyu spent time in prison for his Aum Shinriko crimes and was released in 1999. He currently leads a group called Hikari no Wa, which is Japanese for Circle of Light.
Joyu says that his father abandoned him as a child. And when Joyu was in the cult, he says that Asahara became a “real father” to Joyu, who joined the cult in 1986. At the time, the cult was still presenting itself as a yoga/meditation school. Joyu majored in artificial intelligence in college. He was interested in yoga and spiritual enlightenment. And he says that in Japan, there was an “occult boom” at the time.
According to Joyu, the hierarchy in the Aum Shinriko cult was that cult members who were scientists, chemists and engineers were on the second-highest level of the hierarchy and were treated like priests. It explains why this cult used chemical warfare for its heinous subway attack in 1995. At the time Joyu joined the group, he worked at JAYA, which is a Japanese outer-space agency that is similar to NASA.
Joyu doesn’t seem particularly remorseful about all the destruction caused by Aum Shinriko. He tells his story matter-of-factly. And he clearly has fond memories of his time in the cult. The documentary could have done a better job of asking Joyu about his thoughts about the people who were harmed by the cult, or at least asked him what he thinks about cult warning signs that people need to know about to avoid a cult such as Aum Shinriko.
The documentary’s most heart-wrenching interview is with Yoshiyuki Kono, who was falsely accused in the Japanese media of being the perpetrator of the Mastumoto subway attack in 1995. During this ordeal, his wife went into a coma for 14 years after having a heart attack. Even after experiencing all this trauma, Kono says, “I’ve come to realize that even in the toughest of circumstances, you can look for joy in life.”
Other people interviewed in “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” are journalist Shoko Egawa; attorneys Yuji Nakamura and Taro Takmoto; and Seiich Takeuchi, a Kamikuishiki villager who took photos of the cult members. Takeuchi gives his opinion on why the Aum Shinriko had a reign of terror for so many years: “I think the [government] administration and the police are responsible for it. So many red flags, and they barely investigated them.”
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” does what a lot of documentaries do when they are satisfactory but not outstanding: They rely heavily on reports that journalists have already done and sometimes interview those journalists. This documentary is obviously very well-researched. But more insight probably would’ve been in this movie if the people interviewed for the documentary were asked more probing questions beyond the basics.
Greenwich Entertainment released “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” in select U.S. cinemas on March 19, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on March 28, 2025.