In “Prophet’s Prey,” director Amy Berg adapts private investigator Sam Brower’s seven-year investigation of Warren Jeffs and the polygamist Fundamentalist LDS Church into documentary form. Her efforts paint a disturbing portrait of a notorious leader and a poignant warning about religious manipulation.
Berg’s narrative moves chronologically, zeroing in on Jeffs after a brief introduction that explains how the FLDS Church split off from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which discontinued the practice of polygamy in 1890. The mainstream LDS Church outlawed plural marriage under President Wilford Woodruff, the faith's fourth president. In the film, a telling image traces FLDS priesthood authority and includes photographs of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor, then veers to FLDS leadership.
Step by step, and underscored by testimonials from former FLDS membership, “Prophet’s Prey” traces the path Jeffs took to supplant his father, Rulon, and take over the role of FLDS prophet.
According to interviewees such as Brower, author Jon Krakauer and Ron Rohbock, who used to handle security for the church, Jeffs rose from a childhood of privilege to take over as principal of the FLDS-owned Alta Academy shortly after his own high school graduation. According to Jeffs’ nephew Brent, Jeffs used his authority to molest numerous students.
Eventually, Jeffs set his sights on the church’s top position. Always keen to use the threat of the end times to motivate FLDS membership, Jeffs convinced the faithful to migrate to southern Utah just before the Olympics arrived in 2002.
Additional testimonials explain how he used his skills of manipulation not only for sexual conquests but also to spearhead business ventures that lined church pockets at the expense of its members. Assets rumored to be in the neighborhood of $110 million were used to acquire land in South Dakota for a presumed apocalypse survival bunker, and a 1,600-acre plot in Eldorado, Texas, was used to build a temple.
In a little over an hour and a half, Berg explains how troubled FLDS members eventually found the strength to stand up to Jeffs, and how the leader wound up on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and went into hiding before finally being caught north of Las Vegas. The long court drama that ensued did get Jeffs behind bars, but “Prophet’s Prey” suggests that his influence over the remaining church members is still as strong as ever.
As a documentary, “Prophet’s Prey” is understandably one-sided. One-sided is really all you can get when your subject pleads the fifth in every deposition clip. Footage of Brower driving around Colorado City filming church members as they duck behind fences suggests a stark air of silence from the reclusive church.
We do hear from Jeffs via a series of sermon excerpts that punctuate sequence transitions (the film never makes it clear where these recordings come from). But while the content often sounds familiar, his cool, eerie delivery belies a duplicitous intent. In a videotaped prison phone call, Jeffs appears to give a full confession before veering back into a delusional state.
Like many documentaries, “Prophet’s Prey” relies more on the power of its content than the artistry of its execution. Berg does give us a wealth of testimonials; other frequent contributors include Jeffs’ brother Wallace and Janetta Jessop, who at one point was Warren’s 63rd wife. Audiences also get a surreal few seconds worth of Jeffs covering Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Utah audiences will already be familiar with much of this content as they see faces such as former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who spearheaded the effort to bring Jeffs to justice. And people of religious faith — LDS Church members in particular —will likely be disturbed to see how Jeffs was able to distort familiar doctrines into such awful ends.
“Prophet’s Prey” is not rated and has very little in terms of offensive content (Krakauer uses the F-word on two occasions). But late in the film, Berg plays an audio recording that was used to convict Jeffs of his crimes against underage girls. It’s more suggestive than explicit, but audiences should understand that it’s hard to hear.
Joshua Terry is a freelance writer and photojournalist who appears weekly on "The KJZZ Movie Show" and also teaches English composition for Salt Lake Community College. Find him online at facebook.com/joshterryreviews.