You think you’ve made some poor decisions? Well, trust me, you’re basically a saint compared these folks, and the choices they made.
If there’s one thing all these films have in common, it’s life choices so risky, so predatory, and so genuinely confounding that you’ll spend the whole time screaming at the screen. These are the sorts of trainwreck documentaries that make you thankful you’re an idiot, and not a monster.
‘Our Father’ (2022)
Simple, unbelievable, and then somehow even more unbelievable. That’s the vibe of Our Father, Netflix’s true-crime documentary about Indiana fertility doctor Dr. Donald Cline, who secretly used his own sperm to father at least 94 children over decades without his patients’ consent. To his community, Cline was a trusted physician, a devoted family man, and a church elder. In truth, he was a serial predator whose children mostly grew up in the same small town — a hidden web of half-siblings suddenly connected through DNA kits and Jacoba Ballard, the woman who uncovered it all. Her test revealed not just one half-sibling but dozens, and the connections were chilling: kids in the same schools and sports teams, husbands coaching teams full of half-brothers and sisters, entire families staring down the terrifying risk of accidental incest. Many of the children even share autoimmune disorders possibly passed down from Cline, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis — a condition that should have disqualified him from being a donor in the first place.
When Jacoba took her findings to the authorities, she hit a wall. Indiana law didn’t even recognize secret insemination as a crime, and prosecutors dismissed her case. When Cline was finally caught, the only charge that stuck was obstruction for lying to the FBI, which was a suspended sentence and he faced no jail time. Nearly a hundred lives forever altered, and the man at the center walked free. Director Lucie Jourdan leans too hard on horror-movie tropes (whispery music, cheesy reenactments), but honestly, this story doesn’t need embellishment. The horror is already baked in: a man abusing trust for decades, a system incapable of calling it a crime, and the chilling possibility that his actions weren’t just narcissism but something darker. Whatever the answer, Our Father ensures you’ll never look at fertility clinics, or the people who run them, the same way again.
‘The Imposter’ (2012)
The Imposter is NOT a homage to Among Us. This 2012 documentary follows Frédéric Bourdin, a French con artist who convinced a grieving Texas family, U.S. officials, and even the FBI that he was Nicholas Barclay, a blonde, blue-eyed boy who had vanished three years earlier. Never mind that Bourdin was 23 years old, spoke with a French accent, had brown eyes, and looked nothing like Nicholas. He dyed his hair, copied tattoos, spun a story about international sex traffickers, and somehow wormed his way back into the Barclay home. The family welcomed him, the media fawned over his miraculous “return,” and officials signed off on it all. Watching the footage now, it’s both surreal and maddening, and really the power of denial in action.
Of course, reality eventually caught up. A skeptical private investigator and an FBI agent dug deeper and exposed Bourdin’s scam, revealing his long history of impersonating missing children. Cornered, he flipped the script and accused Nicholas’s family of killing the real boy, a chilling claim that injected even more ambiguity into an already twisted tale. Director Bart Layton plays it like a psychological thriller, blending interviews, reenactments, and archival footage into a slow-burn con game that leaves you breathless. At its core, The Imposter isn’t just about one sociopath, it’s about how badly people want to believe, how far denial can stretch, and how easily truth collapses when everyone’s desperate for a miracle.
‘Holy Hell’ (2016)
Holy Hell proves how dangerously easy it is to lose yourself in a community. Directed by Will Allen, who actually spent over 20 years inside the Buddhafield cult, this documentary blends home videos with modern interviews to show how an oddball ex-actor turned himself into “Michel” a wellness guru who promised enlightenment, but delivered exploitation. At first glance, life in the group looks idyllic. Beautiful people in California meadows, ballet rehearsals, meditation circles, and an endless stream of hugs. For Allen, who joined in the 80s while searching for meaning and belonging, it felt like unconditional love.
Underneath the bliss was control, paranoia, and abuse. Michel isolated followers from outsiders, demanded total loyalty, and manipulated members with “cleansing sessions” that were really fronts for sexual exploitation. His vanity and megalomania grew alongside his power. A guru in eyeliner and Speedos, later a plastic surgery addict, forcing members into grueling performances and round-the-clock “service.” By the time Allen and others realized what they were trapped in, decades had passed and even then, some stayed behind when Michel fled to Hawaii with a core of loyalists. More than a cult exposé, Holy Hell is a warning about blind trust, misplaced faith, and the predators who thrive on both.
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