The five-part series starts out as a show about a shady wellness cult. But what it’s really trying to say is more slippery – and distressingly true to life, writes Micha Frazer-Carroll

“You’re in a cult,” says Devon (Meghan Fahy) to her sister Simone (Milly Alcock) in the opening episode of Netflix’s Sirens. Simone’s boss, billionaire housewife Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore), is leading a group poem recital on her lavish island estate, banging a wooden sceptre in front of an audience. This isn’t the first weird thing Devon has observed after tracking down Simone at work in response to a string of ignored texts. Michaela’s staff – chefs, gardeners, security and dozens of others – fall silent when Michaela’s name is mentioned. It turns out they’re under an NDA. There are also cameras almost everywhere, tracking their every movement. Staff gather in a dead spot out back to eat bagels and doughnuts, since carbs are banned on the premises. “Be careful here, sis,” one staff member ominously warns Devon.

Sirens, adapted by showrunner Molly Smith Metzler from her 2011 play Elemeno Pea, sets itself up as a show about a cult. Across its five episodes – which follow Simone’s life as Michaela’s loyal assistant and Devon’s attempts to “free” her – the dark comedy series slowly peels back layer after layer of the strangeness that surrounds Michaela, promising something deeply sinister is at its core. It feels particularly of-the-moment: the concept of the “modern-day cult” currently looms large over our collective psyche. Beyond Sirens, streaming sites are peppered with popular cult stories that offer morbid intrigue, from Netflix’s Escaping Twin Flames to HBO’s The Vow. Cinema is just as rife with fictions of bizarre, deadly cults – films such as Get Out, Midsommar, or this year’s Opus.

Yet there’s also been a “concept creep” around cults: we’re using their language more and more loosely when we’re referring to ideology-bound subcultures that we don’t like. As late as the 1970s, the term referred specifically to the implementation of religious practices around a particular individual, with an extremist set of values. This was usually confined to a particular physical place, and sometimes involved coercing people into taking drastic actions such as suicide, with exile often framed as being worse than death. Now, headlines regularly refer to the “cult” of wellness, of incels, of tech bros, of busyness, of botox, of youth, of individuals like Oprah and Sally Rooney. It’s in this semantic blurring that the cleverness of Sirens’ satire lies.

From the start, there are Get Out vibes to Sirens. Hundreds of Stepford-wife socialites gather on the sprawling grounds of Michaela’s estate for Labor Day weekend, dressed in the same garish florals – outsider Devon refers to these people as “easter eggs”. They’re vapid and engage in wellness-speak about manifesting and being special. The staff and general social circle are fawningly devoted to Michaela, meeting even the most fastidious of her demands, while rumours swirl that she may have murdered her husband (Kevin Bacon)’s first wife. We’re led to believe that if it looks like a cult, walks like a cult and quacks like a cult, it may well be a cult.

The ace up Sirens’ sleeve, however, is that, come its closing episode, there is no final reveal, no cult, and no murder. In its finale, Devon confronts Michaela at a gathering: “You know what you are? You’re a megalomaniac, cult leader, slut whore, and a murderer.” It’s here that we learn that the billionaire isn’t a cult leader – she’s simply a boss. She is able to make the most meticulous demands of her staff because she has structural and financial power over them, the same reason that she is able to control what her precarious and racialised staff say about her with legal contracts. By virtue of her wealth, she is also a member of a cultural elite, with the power to wield influence over her bubble because of her social capital.

Journalist Derek Thompson discussed the reasons for the cult-ification of everyday life in an interview with Vox last year. He links this to the rise of the internet and the decline of monoculture, resulting in a fragmented society that feels like a loose connection of cult-adjacent groups, fandoms and tribes, united in their rejection of some set of “mainstream” ideals.

The popular podcast Sounds Like a Cult also plays on the slipperiness of the concept, with co-hosts Amanda Montell and Isabela Medina taking a modern-day phenomenon such as Goop, Ikea or Elon Musk, and determining its level of “cultiness”. Montell became interested in cults due to her father being a 1970s cult survivor. This isn’t a far cry from Sirens’ Lily-Rose, a bit-character who Devon meets in the drunk tank after taking an unexpected trip to jail. Lily-Rose recognises the cult-like qualities of Michaela’s following, and tells Devon of the murder rumours swirling around Michaela. She herself is astute to these things, as a survivor of (real-life) self-help cult NXIVM.

Cult in the act: Milly Alcock’s Simone and Julianne Moore’s Michaela in ‘Sirens’ (Netflix)

Cults – both in the conventional sense and this new, slipperier interpretation – rely on exploiting people’s vulnerability. The rejection of the mainstream is often a reflection of some form of existing disenfranchisement, whether that be loneliness, poor self-esteem, or strained financial circumstances. As Sirens progresses, it cleverly fleshes out Simone’s own vulnerabilities that led to her getting swept up in an operation like this: she comes from a family who has experienced poverty, alcoholism, mental distress and suicide, and spent her childhood in foster care. The social, financial and housing security that Simone can access as Michaela’s live-in assistant is a safety blanket – considering that Simone has little to return to back home in Buffalo, New York.

This social commentary carves out the show’s core thesis: that, perhaps, the true “cult” usually isn’t some salacious, Charles Manson-esque conspiracy – rather, it lies in the banal realities of capitalism and consumerism. Wealth and status are enough to create cult-like hierarchies, and to coerce people into behaving in bizarre ways that, on the face of it, conflict with their wellbeing or self-interests. The lonely and marginalised may be more sympathetic to rejecting mainstream ideas. But, as is evident from bemoaned “wellness cults” such as SoulCycle, Goop and clean-eating, these seemingly “anti-mainstream” pursuits are often fashioned after the interests, lifestyles and whims of members of the mega-rich. There is a reason that true modern-day cults can be indistinguishable from self-help or lifestyle businesses: they share many of the same features, and their differences are often a matter of degree.

By the series’ close, it is clear that no matter who occupies the top spot in the Kell estate’s hierarchy, no matter their whims, no matter how dubious their actions may be, and no matter how much dirty laundry has been aired, both the estate’s workers and social circle will fall in line. Sirens sets itself up as both a cult exposé and a murder mystery, but executes a smart bait-and-switch. Its final reveal is depressingly mundane: it’s all just the same old vapidity and moral corruption that always results from money, power and status. They don’t care if you drink the Kool-Aid – just that you’re buying it.

‘Sirens’ is streaming on Netflix now