It’s another triumph for Smith, shedding light on an overstuffed topic he’s able to unpack in a manner as easy to digest as the rest of his work has shown thus far. Though many of the traditional documentary hallmarks exist throughout, his hand guides the story to a conclusion both as somewhat satisfying as it is tragic in its own right.

It’s occasionally nice to be reminded there was ample weirdness in the pre-social media age.

Mr. Smith is an insightful filmmaker and “Bring Me the Beauties” is a stylishly constructed parable about naivete and spiritual emptiness. But any study of cults involves some documentary boilerplate. .... How Von Mierers convinced his followers that they, too, were transplanted aliens, or that he wasn’t hawking the same stuff as countless other grifter-preachers, isn’t made clear.

Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult does a messy job of telling the story of Frederick von Mierers.

The problem with the first episode is that it doesn’t go far enough in describing just how problematic van Mierers and his cult really was.