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Every now and then, it’s nice to make some new friends. Hanging out with the same crew you rolled with in high school, or possibly even grammar school, has its advantages, sure—they know what you like, they’re trustworthy, and they’re the best options when it comes to having someone set you up on a date. But there are downsides to always politicking with familiar faces. There’s no mystery to the weekend routines; you know what you’re going to get, and it’s difficult to reinvent one’s self when old friends are right there to either laugh at the fresh personal spins or chastise on some “That’s not really you” shit.
Speaking of downsides, however, making new pals also has one hell of a drawback, one that’s not easily detectable at first but has the potential to ruin one’s life: Those new cohorts of yours might be an emotionally manipulative and morally deficient cult.
That’s what happens to breakout star Elizabeth Olsen’s character in the haunting psychological drama Martha Marcy May Marlene (hitting theaters in limited release this Friday). Written and directed by 29-year-old newcomer Sean Durkin, the independent dazzler shows the mental deterioration of a girl named Martha (Olsen), who’s trying to reassemble her life immediately after escaping from a dangerous cult stationed inside a Catskill Mountains farmhouse.
Blurring Martha’s present with her past, Durkin intersperses flashbacks to her time within the group, which is overseen by an emotional terrorist named Patrick (John Hawkes); under Patrick’s control, along with a dozen or so other young adults, Martha is subjected to rape, mind games, gender separation, and homicide.
Unfortunately for Martha, she realizes the gravity of her situation a bit too late, but we’re here to prevent that from happening to you, readers, in real life. Before you decide to venture away from your lifelong companions, please consult the following 10 Signs That Your New Circle Of Friends Is Actually A Cult.
Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)
They Take Dieting To Uncomfortably Extreme Levels
10. They take dieting to uncomfortably extreme levels.
Learned from: The Remnant Fellowship
There’s nothing wrong with watching one’s own weight—frankly, not enough people do it. Just take a closer look at your fellow customers inside the local fast food joint the next time you order a salad. Hanging out with a new crowd that endorses healthy living is an ideal situation, minus the flat-ginger-ale-tasting, 64-calorie beers that they try to push on you every weekend. But that’s not how the folks down with the Remnant Fellowship go about their body-mass inspections.
Founded by popular dietician Gwen Shamblin in 1999, the Remnant Fellowship looks down upon the act of eating as a whole, whether it’s a double cheeseburger in a person’s hand or a Lean Pocket. In Shamblin’s eyes, and subsequently the eyes of her devoted followers, hands are meant for praying to a higher power, not for stuffing one’s face with calories, carbs, and trans fat. And, in the Remnant view, it’s sinful to spend more time chowing down than praying upward.
The Jenny Craig of cult leaders, Shamblin promotes a lifestyle that’s presented as nutritional but, in all actuality, is harmful and more than a wee bit cruel. Lesson learned: The second one of your new pals chastises you for snacking, don’t even wait to find out if they’re just jealously hungry.
They Have Weird Foot Fetishes
9. They have weird foot fetishes.
Learned from: Ho No Hana Sanpoygo
If you can’t talk about sex and attractions with your friends, who can you discuss those topics with? Certainly not your parents, unless the sordid details are more Jennifer Love Hewitt than Jenna Haze. Being able to openly chat about what kinds of chicks you like and what your craziest bedroom experiences are with your boys is the cornerstone of “the bro code,” so when an alarmingly perverse kink gets brought up in one of the crew’s living room-set roundtables, it’s cause for worrisome speculation.
For example, they go on and on about how badly they want to suck a woman’s toes, and elaborate on how doing so fulfills some higher purpose. Who knows, they just might be the philosophies behind the Japanese religious camp Ho No Hana, a.k.a. “the foot reading cult.” Or, as Hollywood junkies could refer to it, foot fetishist Quentin Tarantino’s dream come true.
They Start Charging You Money To Hang Out With Them
8. They start charging you money to hang out with them.
Learned from: Aum Shinrikyo
You’d think that friendship should be free, yet that’s now how Shoko Asahara rolls. The brains behind the Japanese New Religious Movement (a.k.a. new-age cult) known as Aum Shinrikyo, Asahara has earned a reputation as one of the more dangerous of his kind; in 1995, his sect made national headlines when some of his members unleashed a toxic and deadly gas attack in a Tokyo subway.
As if killing innocent people isn’t bad enough, Aum Shinrikyo demands that prospective members pay large sums of money to participate in the group’s activities—not unlike a fraternity or sorority, except, you know, for those lethal gas attacks. Going Greek is one thing, though; at least frats do community service and help inductees land jobs through graduate connections. Cults like Aum Shinrikyo, however, basically collect money to aid their societal malevolence.
Imagine your friend drops you off at home after a night of cavorting around town; once you’re about to open the car door, he says, “OK, that’ll be $100. In cash, please. That’s $20 for each of us who came out tonight, not including you.” Pay-to-play is only justifiable in casinos and in the backstreets of Hunt’s Point.
They Refer To Sex In Pretentious Terms
7. They refer to sex in pretentious terms, such as “the cleansing.”
Learned from: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
The rural cult stalking the shadows of Martha Marcy May Marlene operates under a set of strictly enforced rules and practices, all of which are dysfunctional, as well as creepy. For instance, men and women must eat separately, and the women can’t touch the food they’ve cooked themselves until the fellas are totally done. And then there’s the members’ collective penchant for late-night home invasions....
The most off-putting of all the cult’s rituals, however, is what’s called “the cleansing,” which starts off with a female being drugged so she wakes up mid-rape (the sexual assault coming from John Hawkes’ calmly sinister leader). Oh, and the ladies are virgins.
Be mindful the next time your recently acquired crew’s hottest female invites you to her bedroom for what she calls “the purification,” or the “meaningful penetration.” If she looks at you sideways in confusion when you say, “You mean, ‘get it in’?”, kick rocks and reunite with your laptop’s hidden porn stash.
They Dress Like They're From The Amish Country
6. They dress like they’re from the Amish country.
Learned from: The Children Of The Corn movies
Just because we’re so fashion-forward here at Complex, it doesn’t mean that all our friends have to walk around with refined style. In these tough economic times, it’s actually smart to minimize the name brand looks in favor of simpler, bargain-priced threads. Thus, kicking it with new chums who dress themselves with the panache of a blind man inside an Old Navy outlet isn’t a bad look at all.
It’s when they show up to party in outfits straight out of Weird Al Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise” video, however, that one should begin worrying. Use the above photo from 1984’s not-so-final Children Of The Corn II: The Final Sacrifice as a visual guide for how your buddies should not dress. Clearly, if they’re leaving their homes looking like they’ve just stepped out of a time machine that comes with its own corn husks, it’s time to reacquaint yourself with Friendster.
They Get Off Sexually On Violence
5. They get off sexually on violence.
Learned from: Crash (1996)
Of all the various cults out there in the world, suicide groups are, obviously, the worst. On the total opposite end of the spectrum, though, are sexual-minded cults, ones that congregate routinely to share their common intercourse quirks with fellow sanity-lacking perverts. Attending one or two “meetings” would be a good time, sure, but signing up for good? That could very well be an EZ-Pass ticket straight into kinky death.
And leave it to genre provocateur David Cronenberg to encapsulate the dangers of in-out cults in an intelligent and disturbing motion picture, Crash. In it, James Spader plays a film producer who gets in a car accident and sees the woman inside the other vehicle flashing her booby his way. After that, he’s understandably drawn into the clutches of a cult dedicated to getting all hot and bothered at the sight of automobile wrecks. Cronenberg’s explicit flick is enough to make you swear off road head and backseat humping, or at least tell yourself that you will until a sultry cultist asks to ride your shotgun.
They're Prone To Wearing Silly Costumes When It's Not Halloween
4. They’re prone to wearing silly costumes when it’s not Halloween.
Learned from: The Wicker Man (1973)
For our purposes here, we’re going to ignore the existence of Nicolas Cage’s implausibly horrible Wicker Man remake and simply focus on the brilliant 1973 original. Cinema’s greatest movie about the cult world (argue with us if you must, naysayers), director Robin Hardy’s breathtaking descent into chilly tragedy is so disturbing because it’s played with such a jolly spirit.
A detective arrives on the remote island of Summerisle to locate a missing girl, and the majority of the land’s inhabitants are overly happy, beaming with Mr. Sardonicus-like smiles, and clearly up to no good. Without spoiling the film’s superbly bleak ending, let’s just say that the residents of Summerisle, a hotbed of Pagan cult activity, flock to a yearly harvest ritual wearing goofy, oversized animal masks, and the annual date most certainly isn’t Halloween.
Say a house party thrown by one of your new friends switches gears into an impromptu, zoo-themed costume bash—what should you do? Emulate the only genuinely awesome scene from Nic Cage’s version of The Wicker Man: Put on a full-body bear suit and cold-cock everyone in sight. What the hell else would you do?
They Keep A Picture Of Their "Mentor" Alongside Beds While Having Sex
3. They keep a picture of their “mentor” alongside their bed while having sex.
Learned from: The Unification Church, a.k.a. “The Moonies”
We’ve heard of narcissism before, but this shit takes the proverbial cake. The Unification Church, founded in 1954 by Korean megalomaniac Sun Myung Moon, functions in a purely blasphemous, cult-y way: Moon, clearly batshit, claims that he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ, and that his followers must abide by his bizarre rules in order to reach peace in the afterlife.
The “Moonie” head’s worst order: All of the Unification Church’s devotees must position a snapshot of Moon’s mug alongside whatever mattress or flat surface they’re using for sexual intercourse. We assume the philosophy behind such a mood-killing idea is to remind the Moonies that “Christ” (i.e., the delusional Moon) is always watching them. Considering that he looks nothing like a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model (see above), the photo is no doubt a terrible inconvenience for both men and women.
The Women Talk About How They’ve Sworn Off Sex Forever
2. The women talk about how they’ve sworn off sex forever, even after marriage.
Learned from: The Peoples Temple
History’s most notorious cult leader, Jim Jones guided 918 of his Peoples Temple followers into a mass suicide in November 1978, their bodies lying side-by-side in the Guyana village of Jonestown. A religious nut-job, Jones—obviously not the rapper, though it makes you wonder why the Diplomat would pick such a rotten namesake—forbid his loyal underlings from seeing their families on holidays, and took away all of their possessions, both terrible things to do another human being. Even worse, the Temple’s least extreme stipulation denied its members of life’s one great carnal pleasure: the knocking of boots.
So when you take one of your new lady-friends back to the crib and start handling your business, anticipate the “I’m not going all the way tonight” roadblock, which, under normal circumstances, is kosher. When her verbal blockage is piggybacked with, “I’ve sworn off sex forever,” though, it’s a possible indicator that she’s taking the whole faith thing a bit too far.
Bar Conversation Quickly Turns Into Doomsday Warnings
1. Bar conversation quickly turns into doomsday warnings.
Learned from: The Heaven’s Gate cult (1997)
Peep the scenario: Your newfound buddy invites you out for drinks with his close-knit gang of friends, a jovial bunch not without a few sexy female ringers. The shots are flowing, the beer refills arrive before you even ask for any, and the discussions are vibrant. But then talk shifts from what happened on the most recent Walking Dead episode to how the world is on the verge of ending. And how the planet Earth is headed for a complete overhaul, or as the Heaven’s Gate cult referred to it, a "recycling.” Not even three shots of Everclear could mask the discomfort on your face.
The real danger with people who swear by doomsday theories is that they’re already thinking of an exit strategy. One that will send them to whatever other dimension or planet their “leader” preaches about before they ever have to suffer through our planet’s refurbishing.
This is especially important advice come mid-to-late 2012, when the Harold Camping’s of the world resurface to convert non-believers into destruction-fearing minions. However, there is one positive to such desperate lunacy: Assuming that the top nutjob doesn't preach celibacy and encourage castration, chicks anticipating the end of days will be more than willing to smash. Might as well go out on top, right? Or bottom. Depends on what you’re into.