Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
What is it about these egotistical men who under the guise of religion use & abuse people to feel powerful & line their own pockets? This is not an isolated instance but is a story repeated over & over – the religion may be different or skewed for purpose but the underlying desire of the leader is always the same & the damage the exact of the people who’ve bought into their lie is profound & devastating.
This documentary follows several young people – some more recent & some from the church’s early origins – who have all been lured into Robert Shinn’s Shekinah Church in the USA under wholly false pretences. Of the more recent group of young people most are talented dancers all starting out on the competitive career of professional dancing. Of course when Shinn sees this he has dollar signs flashing in his eyes & through manipulation & proselytising he – along with using his family reinforcers who follow his lead & also benefit financially – is able to utilise their talents to make his bank accounts overflow.
This is not a stupid man, he sees the gains to be made on the backs of these fresh faced talented people, sucking them dry as they dance up a storm on social media. But he also knows that religion & business are not palatable bed fellows for the masses so he develops a production company ‘7M’ where he can work them to the bone by day & preach to their young brains & tired bodies by night. Along with targeting young people who know what struggle is or those who are just plain vulnerable he quickly gets them locked into a one-sided contract & his false prophet mantra by dazzling them with beautiful houses & the flashy cars he drives. He knows as the ‘likes’ increase so will their exposure & this will be a spring board to further fiscal gains for him in advertising campaigns, movies etc.. But sadly as so often happens in these stories those that put in the hard graft don’t get to enjoy their hard earned money because the majority of it goes right back into the big boss’ pockets. This is not the only thing they lose though as it is part of his schtick to preach the importance of separation from loved ones, yep they are told in order to ‘save’ their family members from hell they must cut all ties to them…& I mean ALL ties.
The other part of this doco is an examination of the devastation on the other side of the equation – the family members left with no contact except the odd weird grinning dancing video to watch as they scratch their heads wondering what happened to their child. We also get to meet a pair of Korean sisters who were in the first wave of Shekinah casualties & join the current escapees to not only try & acclimate to the real word but to also seek some form of justice. The older of the two sisters, who was trapped for 23 years in Shinn’s mind warping version of Holy Roller Big Brother, is profoundly devastated by her time in the cult and what those years took from her. She is emotionally fragile, angry, confused & wanting payback & no one can blame her for that. It must be a a bitter pill to swallow to come to the realisation that you have spent half you life not wrapped in the arms of a loving church with a direct line to God but rather being manipulated, lied to, abused & stolen from.
This is a challenging doco to watch as it shines a light on some of the worst kind of deception & abuse – when people’s personal faith is used against them solely for power & greed. But it is, in my opinion, worth watching if only to see how these young people are able to gain back their autonomy, realise the victims they actually were & seek to establish new lives where they are the master of their own destiny. Where there is life there is hope & these survivors have plenty of life left to live now they are out of the grasp of the egomaniac that is Robert Shinn.
