Critical response The
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 46 critical responses and judged 98% of them to be positive, with an average rating of 8.1 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "
Wild Wild Country succeeds as an intriguing examination of a forgotten piece of American history that must be seen to be believed."
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 79 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews. Sam Wollaston of
The Guardian praised
Wild Wild Country, giving it a 5 out of 5, stating that "It doesn’t matter how well you know the Rajneeshpuram story – you won’t have seen or heard it told as thoroughly as this". Nick Allen of
RogerEbert.com wrote "by handling this story so intelligently and by opening its heart to a very complicated idea of
good and evil,
Wild Wild Country has a profound, mesmerizing power itself". Robert Lloyd of
Los Angeles Times asserts that "The greater point of the series is its storytelling and wonderful variety of human self-representation, a useful reminder that no two people have the same story to tell. Every speaker is respectfully presented and allowed to speak their piece, and every one is well spoken; rancher or Rajneeshee, government lawyer or commune attorney, each can seem reasonable in turn". An article published in
The New Republic by
Win McCormack, a local Oregon activist, criticized
Wild Wild Country for leaving out critical information regarding the activities of the Rajneesh followers, particularly regarding sexual assault of women and children as well as possible intent to unleash an
AIDS epidemic. McCormack further argued that, "where the filmmakers have fallen down on the job is in the area of interpretation. They have not addressed squarely some of the more important issues raised by their film, and have left others out completely. The latter category includes a few of the cult’s most odious practices, as well as the true extent of the threat it posed not only to its immediate neighbors in Oregon, but to the entire world."
Accolades ==Soundtrack==