Is
Maggie (Brit Marling) a 23 year old woman from the year 2054 or is she a
scam artist on the run from the FBI?  Is 8 year old Abigail (Avery
Pohl) her mother? And why, and with what, does her father inject her
foot with every night?  Does each member, of what might be a cult,
really have to learn that handshake that is so complicated were the
actors chosen only by those who could accomplish it?

Peter
(Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) are a young couple in
California who are would be filmmakers. They are planning to join a cult
and make a film exposing it to the point that Peter swallows a radio
transmitter to make recordings of what is said. They, and supposedly 7-8
others are put through a ruse each time they come to the meeting of
being blindfolded, driven for 20 minutes, get naked and shower and then
putting on robes before they get into that handshake and taken to a room
where they meet Maggie. She wears a robe with a shawl and hoodie, is
attached to an oxygen machine, eats food grown by her followers and has
their blood sent into her body via various tubes for protein. At other
times there is no oxygen tank in sight.

At
the beginning we go through psychology 101 where she has them vomit up,
literally, their problems followed by, maybe, Peter being drawn in by
her and foolishly agreeing to doing something that can cause him all
sorts of problems. Peter seems to be more taken in by Maggie than Lorna
is which causes them problems as a couple.

Out
of nowhere the camera moves to a woman (Davenia McFadden) on an
airplane coming into Los Angeles, checking into a hotel, carrying all
sorts of paraphernalia and then we go back to the cult meeting. In
another 10-15 minute sequence there is a woman showing Lorna how to
shoot a gun which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the
movie just as Peter stopping his car to urinate and, as far as I can
tell, uses an asthma inhaler means anything except to extend the movie
to 84 minutes.

The
director, Zal Batmanglij, who wrote the screenplay with Brit Marling,
 doesn’t really do anything to hide the cheap production values

If
you are a movie goer who likes  the ending to tie up all the loose
threads this one will only leave you confused with a lot of questions.

 
PS If you see the movie please come back and tell me what the title has to do with the movie--thank you.