Netflix's latest true-crime documentary delves into the Church of Latter-Day Saints and a bloody murder plot involving sacred texts, bombs, and hoaxes.
It's so often the case with Netflix's true-crime documentaries that there's an element of the story running out before the episodes do.
You only need to look at the documentary on the Hotel Cecil to know that stringing on certain subjects doesn't work. Others require a degree of exactitude, such as is the case in 'Making A Murderer'.
'Murder Among The Mormons' feels split between the two - there's just enough information across the three episodes that you get everything you need, but you're left with a few questions. That's really just the right amount of everything for a documentary series. If you're captured by the topic, you can look it up afterwards and find out more.
More to the point, 'Murder Among The Mormons' is a documentary series that requires a certain amount of awareness of Mormonism. While it may be relatively well-known in the US, here in Ireland, the Church of Latter-Day Saints is somewhat more obscure. There are roughly 3,000 Mormons in Ireland, and indeed, there was once a belief that Irish people were barred from becoming Mormons due to a story that one of the early leaders of the religion was conned by an Irishman.
At any rate, 'Murder Among The Mormons' utilises familiarity to speed through some parts that could potentially use a little more expounding. The mixture of contemporaneous news footage with recent interviews blends together to first tell a story of a violent bombing campaign before it begins to fold in a vast conspiracy about the very nature of the church itself.
Mormonism has always had issues around its validity compared to other established religions, and the story told in 'Murder Among The Mormons' explains why. After all, the religion was invented in the US by a treasure hunter who claimed to see visions and based his teachings on a series of golden plates he was shown by an angel called Moroni. The Book of Mormon, which was transcribed from said golden plates, makes references to several animals, plants, and implements in pre-Columbus America that simply didn't exist at that time. Not only that, the religion caused wars in US states throughout the 1880s.
Again, when you have that kind of awareness of what Mormonism is and isn't, you begin to see how the central story in 'Murder Among The Mormons' would make sense and, more pointedly, how it can get to a point where bombs are going off.
More than that, what 'Murder Among The Mormons' illustrates that people will ultimately believe what they want to believe, and when you have people who are willing and able to do that, you can tell them anything. That's how the central character of the documentary, Mark Hofmann, managed to not only thrive, but did so for so long.
At three episodes, 'Murder Among The Mormons' zips along with its wild, sensationalist story - yet it never feels lurid, because the story itself is that wild and sensational all by itself without any editing or massaging to make it so.
You've got bombs, money, murder plots, ancient texts, secret documents - and that's just the first episode.