In the years since “Serial” and “Making a Murderer,” the limited series true-crime documentary has been booming. “O.J. Made in America” won an Oscar, “The Vietnam War” built a new narrative of America’s ugliest war, and “American Vandals” skewered the whole genre in a delightful comedic send up. But despite the deluge, people still seem to be hooked. It’s this momentum that “Wild Wild Country,” the new Netflix doc series, wants to ride all the way to cult status. And while it’s got all the right ingredients to be the next jaw-dropping TV event, the production, at times, falls short of the mesmerizing and absurd story at its heart.
In broad terms, “Wild Wild Country” is a series about generational divides, religious animosity, and the hate cast upon those who you don’t understand. But what makes the series stand out from others in the genre are the strange and hard-to-believe details that make up this very true story — the inundation of Rolls Royces, the biological attacks, the wild orgies, the violent meditation, the million dollar watches and the central figure, who doesn’t so much as speak for three years.
All of which makes the narrative of the series chaotic and overstuffed — which is hardly a fault of the filmmakers, Chapman and Maclain Way (the excellent “The Battered Bastards of Baseball”), who do good work translating a messy, years-long trainwreck into a compelling and almost-sensible story. Put simply, though, “Wild Wild Country” follows the Rajneesh movement and the utopian city of 10,000 they tried to establish in the early 1980s in rural Oregon.
Gary Joshua Garrison 