The terrifying allure of Netflix's cult docuseries 'Wild Wild Country'

Kelly Lawler | USA TODAY

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“Someone will write a book about this, and I will guarantee you when that book comes out, people will say that it’s fiction.”

So says an Oregon official in Netflix's Wild Wild Country, a six-part documentary series (now streaming) about the Rajneesh cult that, in 1981, purchased tens of thousands of acres in Oregon to build a Utopian city. Its presence sparked conflict with the locals, multiple lawsuits, a federal investigation, attempted murder and the largest bio-terrorism attack in U.S. history.

The story also involves the founder of Nike, the wife of The Godfather's producer, the Jonestown massacre and more red, orange, maroon and purple clothing than you could possibly imagine being captured in a single frame.

Country isn't fiction, but it is, well, absolutely wild. As the series — directed by siblings Chapman and Maclain Way and produced by Jay and Mark Duplass — unfolds, what seems like a straightforward story of culture clash spins into something more disturbing, engrossing and gross than you could possibly imagine.

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The series follows the devotees of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru who advocated free love and radical meditation and developed an intense following in the late 1970s and early '80s. He moves his home base from India to a sprawling ranch in Oregon near the tiny town of Antelope (population: 40 or so conservative retirees), and creates Rajneeshpuram, a self-contained city run by his cult's members.

It doesn't go well. The members fight with the locals, eventually buy out the town and take over its city council, and then attempt to control the county seat. Their methods are dirty but legal, until they turn criminal and violent.

Rajneesh looms large, a mostly silent figure in luxe clothes and a gray beard. But the documentary's most fascinating subject is Ma Anand Sheela, his personal secretary and spokesperson, who virulently defended the cult in the press. Sheela is presented as a soft-spoken old woman in her on-camera interviews, but a dangerous criminal mastermind in the past, feared and hated by the enemies of the cult and even some within it.

For some, Country might offer too much balance, but its willingness to engage with the cult members only adds to its jaw-dropping authenticity. Another grandmotherly woman appears to be just a bystander until you learn she attempted murder. A lawyer seems perfectly reasonable, until he isn't. The Antelope citizens seem like bigots, until they don't. Country seems like a standard true-crime doc until events abruptly go well beyond a regular sort of wild.

And after that, you can't look away.