Roch "Moses" Thériault (Luc Picard) lives in a commune in the woods with his nine "wives" and many children. They pretend to enjoy an idyllic lifestyle, but social worker Paula Jackson (Polly Walker) becomes suspicious, and soon discovers evidence that they're actually an abusive cult.
Not to be confused with the 1972 biopic of the same name.
Savage Messiah contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: The morning after Roch stabs Lise in the hand, he pulls the knife out and says, "It looks bad. I think the arm has got to go." He hacks her right arm off with a meat cleaver just above the elbow. This act of brutality is the last straw for most of Roch's remaining followers, including Lise. She reports the crime, and Roch is convicted of aggravated assault.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Roch asks Paula why she's in this remote part of Canada. Paula, who has learned that Roch was on parole in another province, answers, "Not because I was breaking the conditions of my parole."
- Commonality Connection: In an attempt to persuade the remaining wives to leave Roch, Paula correctly describes many aspects of their life and what they think and feel about them. She knows these things because she herself is a Domestic Abuse survivor.
- Commune: Roch and his followers live in a handful of huts in the woods. They catch or make most of what they need, and get everything else by either appealing to outsiders' pity or offering sex. They pretend that they're living blissfully In Harmony with Nature, hiding the severe abuse that they suffer.
- Cut Himself Shaving: Lise (Isabelle Blais) runs in front of a police car at night and is almost hit. When the officers get out, they find her screaming and crying with bloody gashes on her back. But in the hospital the next day, she insists that she got lost in the woods, fell in the bushes, and cut herself by accident.
- Department of Child Disservices: Narrowly averted. After Marie-Claude (Pascale Montpetit) tells Paula that children are abused in the cult, all of the children are removed and placed into foster care. Child services then sends a small team of investigators to the commune, where Roch effortlessly charms them by playing on the appeal of the free-love, close-to-nature lifestyle and the investigators' nostalgia for The '60s. He convinces them that the government can't stand to see people be free and is prejudiced against French-speakers like himself and his followers. The investigators unanimously recommend that the children be returned to the commune, and the higher-ups plan to do that based only on the investigators' word. None of them bother to look at the other evidence, like the transcripts of Marie-Claude's testimony or the videos of the children, many of whom have severe behavioral problems caused by their upbringing. Only when Paula threatens to get the press involved do the higher-ups agree to allow a hearing, where the judge rules that the children should remain in foster care.
- Fingore: Roch cut one woman's finger off with wire cutters.
- Five-Finger Discount: Two women go to a market to sell bread baked by the cult. While one woman chats with the cashier, the other hides canned goods in her purse.
- Flashback Effects: Paula has flashbacks in blue to her abuse at the hands of her ex-husband.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: Roch's former followers accuse him of beating people with broken bottles.
- Harmful Healing: This turns out to be the fate of Suzette, a former wife who supposedly left. Suzette got sick, a luxury only allowed to Roch. He gave her a molasses enema, causing her a great deal of pain. Then he "operated" by cutting open her stomach and pulling part of her intestines out. She died in agony a day later. Her body was buried in the middle of the commune, where it stayed undiscovered for years.
- Harmful to Minors: All of the children are molested by Roch and witness adults having sex, but the slaves also regularly watch Roch beating Suzette.
- Healing Hands: Roch claims to be able to heal people by touching their skin. He talks a waitress into letting him cure her back pain, and thanks to his charisma, it works.
- Impaled Palm: Roch is partying with his remaining followers one night when he suddenly stabs Lise in the hand, pinning her to the table. Most of the other women are too drunk to notice. He leaves her like that overnight.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: At one point Roch threw a woman on the ground when she was six months pregnant.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Paula sees Lise with her arm hacked off, she says, "Oh my God, what have I done?" She blames herself for provoking Roch's rage because she had previously visited the commune to try to talk the wives into leaving him.
- Sex for Services: Local men do repair work for the commune in exchange for sex with the wives.
- Spiteful Spit: In the courthouse, Roch's three remaining wives walk past the women who accused him of abuse. One of the wives spits at the other women.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The movie's closing text says that Roch is in prison, three of his wives are still loyal to him and have conceived children during their conjugal visits, and Roch is eligible for parole but hasn't gotten it.
- Wicked Stepfather: Roch is abusive even to his biological kids, but treats them far better than the children of other fathers. Those kids are slaves who live in the kitchen, regularly witness Roch beating or having sex with his wives, and often aren't fed enough. After they're rescued, their foster parents find that they don't even know how to sit in a chair or use a spoon.