'Abigail Before Beatrice' is a Painful Tale of Cults, Manipulation and Abuse [CFF 2025 Review]

There are many reasons that some join a cult. Loneliness. Uncertainty. The yearning for acceptance. In some ways, it isn’t all that different from what drives us into a relationship. What is being with someone if not a search for a partner who understands us, believes in us, loves us for who we are? That’s what makes a cult dangerous; What makes a relationship dangerous. Because we want to believe so badly in a person or community that opens their arms to us, so much so that we can become blind to the red flags pinned to their clothing. With her emotionally charged sophomore feature, Abigail Before Beatrice, writer/director Cassie Keet observes the similarities between a cult and a toxic partner through that murky lens that makes the truth so difficult for some of us to see. 

​Some years after cult leader, Grayson (Shayn Herndon), is sent to prison for murder, one of his followers, Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), is attempting to get on with her life. She works from home as a telemarketer and has started to form a romance with the man who now lives in her old home after he catches her picking the strawberries that she herself planted. Try as she might, though, Beatrice can’t move on. She believes Grayson is the god he claims to be, a vessel for “the source” that will free her from her pain. And she yearns for his return. So, when fellow cult survivor, Abigail (Riley Dandy), reaches out with a perspective opposite of Beatrice, the young woman is sent into an internal clash, caught between what she believes to be true, and the truth others are pushing her to face.

When we think of cults, we think of the Manson family. Jim Jones and his poisonous Kool-Aid. We think of films like Ti West’s The Sacrament, the Satanists of Rosemary’s Baby, maybe even the doomed souls of the Dream Warriors rip-off, Bad Dreams. Groups that are recognizably cruel, sinister, or pure evil (if you believe in such a thing). But that’s only half of the picture. Because most of the time, these communities don’t appear so hostile…at least not at first glance. As we watch with the women taken in by Grayson through various flashbacks, his is a small community that seems kind. Welcoming. That makes these women feel more loved and accepted than they did in their lives outside of the commune…especially thanks to Grayson’s disarming charm. Through a slow but methodical pace, we grow to understand Beatrice and Abigail, what made them join, what made them stay…how easy it might be for the same to happen to us.

​And then Grayson’s belt shows up on the front door one morning, and the audience is made to see the horror of his so-called “source”.

Abigail Before Beatrice is most interested in the drama of a situation that tears at the audiences’ hearts with an immense sadness that rarely eases up. Still, there is a certain horror to this story of one woman’s difficulty in accepting the troubling reality that she is a victim. We watch as Abigail and others attempt to guide Beatrice into seeing Grayson for what he really is, often through tear-streaked breakdowns and shocking denials. Dudley—who horror fans may know as Motherface from Dude Bro Party Massacre III—delivers an attention-grabbing performance that should put her on everyone’s radar. She is simply astounding as Beatrice, bringing to life this shy, yearning yet delusional woman who is as warm as she is upsetting in her refusal to view her time with the cult as anything other than magical. She’s a character who elicits fear for and fear of her. How horrifying, to watch this woman take abuse from a man and believe she deserves it. How awfully honest to what so many women experience.

Of course, films about the manipulation of cults are a dime a dozen, and Grayson’s own isn’t exactly steeped in originality. But by tying the cult to themes of abusive men and toxic relationships through two very different perspectives of reality in Beatrice and Abigail, Keet’s story stands out as one that is all too painfully relatable. Not just intentionally through the lens of an abusive relationship that most of us have either witnessed or experienced ourselves, but in a perhaps unintentional sense, as well. These days, all of us exist in separate realities thanks to an endless stream of misinformation, contradictory news sources, and politicians who, to the shock of many of us, manage to charm their voters into a cult-like following despite the rest of us seeing them for the danger they are. Abigail Before Beatrice taps into a feeling of despair and horror that many are feeling right now as we work to pull others from the lies they’re living in, often to no avail.

All of that to say that Abigail Before Beatrice achieves exceptional success in expressing the pain of a world where we live in different realities, and offers understanding to how a loved one could fall into a trap of abuse and falsehoods in a way that reaches deeper levels than many cult films do. Keet’s latest may feel like something you’ve seen before, and it stumbles a touch in the end, but it’s nevertheless a strong sophomore feature from the director full of engaging performances that reaches into a profound well of pain and manipulation that so many struggle to understand.

By Matt Konopka