Tales of the Online Dance Cult

Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult, now streaming on Netflix, presents as a familiar cautionary tale. A Midwestern girl heads to L.A. to strike it big, but falls prey to nefarious forces.

And yes, the three-episode docuseries featuring TikTok’s Miranda Derrick and other dancers managed by 7M follows that trope. But wait, there’s more! Dancing for the Devil also is a soap opera, a true-crime investigation with international intrigue, and an indictment of how the police handle sexual assault cases, all punctuated with moody dance interludes.

It’s a lot. But even with multiple storylines and a large cast, it’s a compelling watch.

First things first. Derrick and her husband James, known professionally as B-Dash, create content for a living. That’s a fancy way of saying they post short videos of themselves dancing solo, with each other, and in ensembles with assorted fellow 7M dancers. They are, in the parlance of this world, dancefluencers.

I first saw their reels on Instagram, because at the time I was a middle-aged lady in COVID quarantine. But their true audience is on TikTok, where the pair has amassed some 8 million followers with their videos, most of which feature pop and rock hits as the soundtrack.

Before Miranda Derrick was Miranda Derrick, she was half of the Wilking Sisters. Miranda and her sister Melanie danced together starting in their childhood in Michigan, eventually amassing a serious following on social media. We learn through multiple sit-down interviews with Melanie and her parents that the family became amateur detectives after Miranda started dating James. In their telling, James introduced her to the invite-only church, led by Robert Shinn. It’s the purported spiritual home of a whole troupe of dancers you might have seen on TikTok. (Vik! RainO!)

The Wilkings and numerous others featured in the docuseries say Shekinah is actually a cult. They allege that Shinn, chief pastor and also the founder of 7M, isolates its members from their families, takes the bulk of their earnings and has even sexually assaulted parishioners. Shinn told church members they had to tithe as well as make donations to the “Man of God” fund, according to the film. Assorted lawsuits are pending.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Derricks and Shinn didn’t cooperate with the production team. So we only hear from them through bits of video – professional as well as plenty of Wilkings home video – and in creepy voice-over excerpts from Shinn’s sermons. Miranda Derrick did post a statement on June 4 about the docuseries, stating that she’s not in a cult, her family doesn’t accept her road to God, and that lawsuits mean she can’t say much more.

7M also posted a statement on its Instagram after the docuseries dropped, calling it a “slanderous work of fiction.”

Most of the media coverage has focused on Miranda since the series debuted. But the other sisters at the heart of the film are equally riveting. Priscylla and Melanie Lee are Korean-American siblings who joined Shekinah in its early years roughly two decades ago. Their backstory of a fractured family and their experiences at the church – bolstering what the Wilkings and others say in interviews – is both heartbreaking and mesmerizing. Grueling conversations that illustrate the lingering aftermath of trauma anchor their story arc.

I could have watched an entire extra episode on these two. They join forces with the Wilkings, spurring them to keep fighting for their daughter, and a third family whose son is a 7M dancer and Shekinah member. We spend lots of time at the kitchen table as the group tries to reconnect with their children and, in the Lees’ case, bring Shinn to justice.

Dancing for the Devil kicks off as salacious dance-world gossip but quickly tugs at your emotions. There’s little resolution, in part because the production team was filming the Wilkings’ search in real time, and also because there hasn’t really been a resolution for many of those featured. Regardless, it’s a captivating watch–if an unsettling one.