An unsettling documentary about Anne Hamilton-Byrne’s Melbourne cult The Family

REVIEW: A structurally shaky, but nevertheless unsettling documentary about the bizarre goings-on inside Australia’s most insidious cult.

THE FAMILY (M)

Director: Rosie Jones (The Triangle Wars)

Starring: Anne Hamilton-Byrne, Billy Byrne (archive footage), Lex De Man.

Rating: three stars

Raised inside a secret where no-one raised the alarm

A STRUCTURALLY shaky, but nevertheless unsettling documentary about the bizarre goings-on inside a secret sect founded right here in Australia.

At the peak of its worrying activities in the early 1980s, the cult-like organisation known as ‘The Family’ cast an unusual spell (and without doubt, an ethical blindfold) upon its members.

The most compelling figure in this disturbing saga is the infamous Family spearhead Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a former yoga teacher who, on occasion, saw herself as the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Bill Hamilton-Byrne, Adam Lancaster and Anne Hamilton-Byrne.

On most other occasions, it proved impossible to gauge what the mysterious and charismatic Hamilton-Byrne was really getting up to inside her highly unorthodox mind.

Courtesy of some excellent archive digging, the filmmakers have uncovered plenty of riveting footage of Hamilton-Byrne and also her equally unworldly husband Billy at the peak of their inexplicably persuasive powers.

However, as truly gripping and often flesh-crawling as this material might be, it never quite helps us understand how The Family came to exist in the first place. Or, for that matter, exactly how Hamilton-Byrne became so skilled in getting people to part company with all of their better judgment and most of their money.

In the most haunting sections of the documentary, a clearer focus is applied to exposing how Hamilton-Byrne and her followers employed dubious methods of recruiting children into the fold.

(Accusations are made many youngsters were “acquired” by illegal means, with the ongoing assistance of powerful, conspicuously unnamed Melbourne authority figures. Again, this is indicative of the filmmakers’ tendency to take an informational short cut where further, deeper clarification is required.)

The 28 stolen children were dressed identically with matching bleached blonde hair.

It is impossible not to be moved by the on-camera testimony of former young Family members who were eventually freed from the virtual prison of the sect’s Lake Eildon HQ. There is real bravery behind their painful recollections of unremitting cruelty, indoctrination, and even the administering of the dangerous drug LSD.

Many holes in this yarn that could have used some real filling, but immersive stuff all the same.

The Family is now showing at the Cinema Nova Carlton, Lido Hawthorn, Classic Elsternwick and Cameo Belgrave in Victoria. Other states around Australia to follow