Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

Though the four-part series from director Rachel Dretzin is extremely hard to watch at times, the first-hand accounts from survivors are nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director Rachel Dretzin has crafted a masterful, engrossing and at times chilling series that plays out like a real-life horror movie; even the eerily effective score sounds like something out of Blumhouse Productions.

Drestzin has done her job. ... If you want insight into a closed society that is only known via blaring headlines, then watch Keep Sweet: Pray And Obey. Just be ready for a narrative that will make you uncomfortable and angry at the same time.

Dretzin’s series functions as a celebration of the strength and self-confidence necessary to achieve genuine liberation. ... The likelihood of this series changing hearts and minds is probably scant. Nonetheless, at its best, it plays like an exposé designed less for viewers who would never find themselves in these circumstances than for those whose eyes have yet to be fully opened.

At a time when American women’s rights are threatened by a wider array of religion-based forces, though, this straightforward document of how extreme it can get looks pretty necessary.

There’s a noble effort here in collecting their stories. But because it traffics so heavily in trauma from start to finish, often involving child sexual abuse, treating this saga mostly as a shocking play-by-play with a reptilian boogeyman at the center feels a little cheap. Something about "Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey" just doesn't sit quite right.

"Keep Sweet" is occasionally guilty of veering too far into the weeds of individual stories and engages in some sleazy flourishes -- like adding graphics to make Jeffs' eyes appear snake-like when someone refers to them as such -- that don't belong in a serious documentary. ... "Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey" ultimately owes its strength to those who didn't obey and possessed the courage to break free, as well as outsiders working to expose what was happening.