Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dancing For The Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About Dancers Who Found Themselves In A Cult And Didn’t Realize It

Dancing For The Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult is a three-part docuseries, directed by Derek Doneen, about how people who became TikTok influencers through dancing entered into an arrangement with 7M Films, a production company run by Robert Shinn, the founder of the Shekinah Church that ended up feeling, in their words, more like a cult. Who knew becoming a dancing star on social media was so dangerous?

DANCING FOR THE DEVIL: THE 7M TIKTOK CULT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A house near Detroit. We see a video of Miranda and Melanie Wilking talking about childhood journals on their YouTube channel.

The Gist: Most of Dancing For The Devil centers around the Wilking sisters, who became very popular on both YouTube and TikTok; on the latter, they became well-known for the dance routines they posted there. After they got a DM from James Derrick, known on Instagram as @bdash_2, they collaborated with him. Soon, Miranda and Derrick got into a relationship, and she moved to Los Angeles.

The deeper their relationship got, the more Miranda got involved in the Shekinah Church, run by Shinn. About a dozen other dancers, all of whom were religiously-inclined, were members of the church, and Shinn decided to create 7M Films in order to help them all with the production of social media videos and assist in sorting out all of the opportunities that came their way as their feeds became popular.

This is when Miranda began pulling away from her family, with whom she used to be close. Even Melanie stopped hearing from her sister, finding out that she and Derrick got engaged via a dance video on her feed.

Doneen interviews Melanie Wilking and her parents, Dean and Kelly, and also talks to former members of the church who talk about the concept of “Die to yourself”, a principle that Shinn taught that may have been the reason why Miranda Wilking and others decided to cut off communication with family members.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There have been so many cult-based docuseries lately, but Dancing For The Devil feels somewhat closer in spirit to The Secrets Of Hillsong.

Our Take: Most cult-oriented docuseries talk to and about the people who got sucked into the cult, and lean especially hard on the one or two families who are the most vocal about losing contact with loved ones who are inside that cult. But they also devote a good amount of time to how the leaders of these cults manage to bring in people via promises of changing their lives and are charming and persuasive enough to get them to stay, despite increasingly strange and restrictive conditions. Dancing For The Devil has a lot of the former and almost none of the latter.

The Wilking sisters are the main focus of the first episode, and they are the most dominant example of a family fighting tooth and nail to bring a loved one they feel they lost to 7M back into the fold. There’s a scene, for instance, of Dean Wikling videoing an attempt to contact Miranda through the gate intercom at the mansion where many of 7M’s dancers lived and created content. There’s also a detailed account of how Miranda refused to attend her grandfather’s funeral. It’s all heart-tugging stuff; you can’t help but feel for the Wilkings given just how close the sisters were.

But there isn’t a whole lot of information about Shinn and just what he was able to do to keep Miranda and other people locked into the organization, much less persuade them to separate themselves from their families. There are some audio recordings of Shinn giving sermons and discussing what outsiders are saying about the church. But no particular evidence is presented that would tell us just why people became so loyal to him.

Was it the fact that the members of 7M were all religious and they identified with his message? Or was it the fact that he promised increased exposure to their social media feeds through their production and marketing, with the increased money that comes with it? It’s unclear. And there’s no real evidence that Shinn had the charm to make people follow him, or was able to create a system of followers who could do the persuading for him.

There are fleeting moments where we see evidence of just what members of 7M think of their families, notably a post by Derrick that calls the Wilkings racists who didn’t accept him into their family because he was Black. But we never get more than a glimpse; in fact the Wilkings don’t even talk about the incendiary post and why Derrick may have said what he said.

It’s obvious that the former members who are interviewed feel he did brainwash them, and in the second episode, the inevitable increase in abuse will be discussed. But the first part of the series didn’t really give us much a feel of the whys and hows of 7M, which is always what we’re looking for in shows like this.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Melanie Lee, a former member of the church, talks about seeing the videos Melanie and her parents made talking about Shinn, and she says, “No fucking way… he’s still around.”

Sleeper Star: Kevin “Konkrete” Davis is one of the more persuasive former 7M members that are interviewed, especially when he talks about Shinn trying to persuade him to “die to” his young son, something by which Davis couldn’t abide.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s a segment where the former 7M members talk about how Shinn got them to dance to classic songs instead of the latest dance hits. Yes, it worked, which may be evidence of why people became loyal to Shinn. But that connection isn’t very strong and it makes us wonder why that information is there.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Dancing For The Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult isn’t necessarily one-sided, but it’s certainly unbalanced, in the sense that we hear a lot about the victims of 7M were told to do but not a lot about what drew them to Shinn and made them stay under his control.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.