The Complete, Unrated Comedy Thriller Will Help You Reach Your Ultimate Form
Written by Robert Scucci | Published
If you are sane and in good health, and everything is going well in your life, you probably won’t find yourself being tricked into joining a cult. Or, if you’re like Ansel Roth (Leland Orser) from 2014 Mistakesyou are so against the idea of cults that tear apart families and ruin lives that you devote your life to finding victims and reorganizing them so that things can go back to the way they were before they ran away from home.
This is where things get complicated, because what if you owe a ton of money to your loan shark publisher at the same time a desperate family comes after you to reunite them with their estranged daughter? There are no guarantees that you can help them, but you can probably get the money you need, put on a good show, walk away unscathed, and get on with your life.
At least that’s what Ansel thinks will happen Mistakesbut it’s been a long time since he discovered his reckless ways.
One Sad, Sad Redemption Arc
In MistakesAnsel Roth lives a very sad life, moving from cheap hotel to cheap hotel, trying to push his new book. While his first published work was a highly successful article about the victims of a sabotage cult to return to their old lives, his new book is a takeover aimed at recouping losses from his recent divorce and other life setbacks.
Even though he’s having trouble selling his new book, he at least manages to make free room and board with hotel visits, and if not, he lives out of his car. It’s really sad, but there’s also a sense of entitlement that makes the whole situation immeasurably funny, especially when he’s arguing about fake food vouchers and stealing all the towels and remote batteries from whatever room he’s going to be taken out of.
To make things worse for Ansel, his boss, Terry (Jon Gries), not only cuts off ties with him because he doesn’t move any units, but demands payment of past dues within a week, or else. He even sends one of his animals, Mick (Lance Reddick), to personally threaten him as Ansel travels the country on his increasingly tragic book tour.
Desperate for money, and wondering if his entire career is a joke, Ansel is approached by Evelyn (Beth Grant) and Paul (Chris Ellis) about their daughter, Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who has run away to become a member of the Faults, a strange cult that preys on the innocent. Ansel, in his infinite wisdom, agrees to help her find out the exact amount of money she owes Terry so she can put all her failures behind her and move on with her life.
The program is simple at first. Ansel, with Evelyn and Paul’s permission, hires actors to act out Claire’s kidnapping. Staying in yet another haunted motel, Ansel works with Claire, who is unaware that her parents are living in the next room, waiting for her success. Things continue to get complicated with Claire’s resistance to treatment, and Mick doing surprising things to collect all the money Ansel owes Terry.
A Masterclass In Manipulation
Mistakes it takes on the exact kind of cult-level depth you know if you’ve watched any documentaries on the subject, but subverts expectations every step of the way. Ansel knows all the tricks used to bring someone down the system and has had mixed results in the past. He believes he needs to break Claire’s spirit and rebuild her from the ground up so she can reunite with her family and put the Mistakes behind her.
Claire, on the other hand, has her own ideas about how things should work. He is incredibly stubborn, and his behavior, as well as external forces beyond his control like the looming presence of Terry and Mick, push Ansel into increasingly compromising positions. The constant running of the money and unexpected detours during the deprogramming session leaves him sleepless, slowly eroding his determination and, in many cases, giving Claire the upper hand.
What is so exciting Mistakes it’s how everyone digs deep for their own selfish reasons. Ansel needs money. Claire does not want to leave her religion. Her parents want everything to go back to the way it was, even if things were the way they were years ago that Claire, now an adult, no longer serves.
At one level, everyone is deceiving everyone else, too Mistakes it makes you question who the real subject really is. Part of the fun is figuring out who is pulling the trigger on who, and this sense of mistrust and hatred is pushed onto the audience in ways that make you not really want to root for anyone, while hoping that the right team will get what they want.
As of this writing, Mistakes is streaming for free on Tubi.
