User Reviews

Yes ep. 1 & 2 had a lot of detail, tedious, 'edgy themes/audio' and a bit sleeper..

EP 3 of the doc series really shows the amount of time that lapsed from the start of series. The audience starts getting some answers and progression! And many things to think about

I found myself pausing and looking stuff up numerous times.

Deeply saddened by how vile some people are.. .. While shooters livestreamed their actions some people actually still sent supporting messages in the livestream & many were worried their site '8chan' being taken down.

Sickening.

Its a documentary so of course you have to keep the creators agendas in mind.

-Regardless I did learn a lot of new things and for that I'm grateful.

~~Will update upon watching ep4-6~~

From the start it was clear what was important wasn't what the mysterious "Q-Anon" was saying, but how it got started and what its foundations were, who were the possible founders, and what was the evidence. The series is an investigation, but it's also a a dissection. Right from the first episode, we see the Watkins, Ron and Jim, as they play around in saying nothing, but saying everything. They come off as not laying all the cards on the table, and are so clearly having loads of fun. They really make the viewer's skin crawl. This was a great series. I hope it opened some eyes to the audience that the whole Q nonsense was and always will be, silly conspiracy craziness and is ultimately destructive.

Very interesting subject matter with some very colourful characters. Scary to think that so few can influence/manipulate the world/politics so easily.

It is quite long and has a lot of filler that could be trimmed, I found myself getting lost in some of the tedious details at times, try to keep track of who did what and why is challenging at times but maybe that is a reflection of the subject matter.

And hang in there till the end they do basically reveal who Q is - I think, unless that was a deliberate slip up - you never know with these guys!

In seeing all of the six episode documentary mini-series by filmmaker Cullen Hoback, what I got was a search for trying to explain what Q is, was, could have been, and ultimately fizzled out to leave thousands disillusioned and confused while others hold onto the hope it is something bigger that never really was.

What this mini-series sets out to do was start at an origin of "Q", follow the lines, expose the players and put it all out there for the audience to decide.

At first, it came across as a slow moving digital 'who done it' and there were plenty of whos that might have been it, and the whos that wanted to take credit for it and had nothing to do with it. Who wanted to be big man Q. It was like the "Anonymous" craze, but this was through the internet with a bunch of...Gamers?!?! Well, the documentary starts there and lays what they found out for your thoughts.

That's where the mini-series got bogged down in the beginning in tracing its origins and introducing the characters. This is because the filmmaker Cullen Hoback took 3 years in finding and gathering info. But towards the end of this documentary mini-series, in tying the evidence gathered a picture emerges. Q may be who you think -- or not -- as you may have been deliberately led astray.

Based on the information presented, it draws a conclusion as to who has been swirling around in the Q origins, but it's up to the viewer to decide. And this makes me want to suggest to turn all this over to the DOJ/FBI to take a look at it too. But this viewer decides in seeing Ron Watkins blink rapidly every time he lies, put him into the suspicious column for me. Quite the cat and mouse game this turned out to be, Cullen Hoback deserves kudos in chasing it down and presenting what he found, and it becomes quite enlightening to watch.

Gives you a peek into the Rabbit hole of QAnon and exposes the players, and even "Qanon" himself. It traces it's origins, it's precursors and the behind-the-scenes players both public and private who struggle with each other to control the narrative and the movement that they have created. Just watch it to find out the real truth for yourself. Definitely worth your time if you are even remotely interested in this movement.

This is a well-made docuseries on a subject I knew little about. I found it interesting and shocking for the most part. My interest waned a bit during the middle episodes with what felt like filler before getting to the point. It might have been better with four episodes instead of six.

Watching this reinforced a few things I already knew, things that anger me:

1) I can't believe how ignorant, willfully misinformed and plain stupid so many people are. How some people have zero ability to differentiate reality from purely fabricated conspiracy theories. And how they are so confident they are right without any justification for that confidence.

2) Most politicians are pieces of garbage. On both sides of this broken system. They will do and say anything that benefits their own self interest. Anything to gain power or money. They are basically prostitutes. And they have no regard for how their decisions may negatively affect society.

3) The fact that the attack on the Capitol Building was allowed to happen is an embarrassment. Anyone involved should be ashamed, whether it was the attack itself or simply spreading misinformation.

I hope we can learn our lesson, but I wouldn't put my money on it. (1 viewing, 4/8/2022)

It's a six part series. So be patient and by the third episode it picks up speed. If the ignorant reviewers on here would wait till episode 4, they could see how it all sets itself up. This is the truest documentary on Q I have seen yet. I followed this subject for over a year and I still learned more. People should watch this, just so they can see who Q is. I think you would be shocked who the Q person is. One of the better documentaries I've seen in a decade.

Irony of ironies, Director Cullen Hoback's expose on how the QAnon phenomenon drew millions down a conspiracy rabbit hole, shows that the filmmaker himself chased a few of his own bunnies.

Q: Into The Storm initially does a good job showing the origins of the phenomenon, but soon it becomes apparent that this is more Hoback's reporters video notebook than a cohesive Documentary. He follows the trails wherever they lead him and dumps all the 'notes' on the viewer and lets them mostly sort it out. In particular, Hoback gets far too caught up in untangling the interplay between 8 Chan's shadowy owners, the father and son team of Jim and Ron Watkins, and their chief nemesis and original website creator, Frederick Brennan (the site is now called 8 Kun). Again, the initial look at this trio is intriguing, but Hoback lets them take over his own documentary. And, even if he thinks he's 'solved' the mystery of who Q is, he still leaves open questions as to who actually originated the mystery man and how it spread.

My critique of the Doc aside, the first, second and last episodes ARE worth watching. A few of the other QAnon followers profiled really put a face to the cult. Some of these folks had respectable lives before being sucked into the Q movement. They got sucked deeper and deeper into the vortex - and, many haven't emerged yet (the Q Shaman makes a couple of appearances). It's a frightening vision and the final episode detailing the January 6th insurrection is quite chilling.

In the end, I cannot recommend Q: Into The Storm as a Documentary series, but, it does contain some important information. Hoback needed a strong outside editor (and a network that should have advised it to be half as long).

... and even I was bored. If you didn't know what Q'Anon believed before you watched this, I doubt you'd know it afterwards. What wasn't lost on me is the fervor with which these people do believe stuff that sounds like pure hogwash to most people.

I am basically rewriting this review based on watching the entire series. I still don't agree with the 10 star reviewers. This documentary is actually three stories not one story, and thus it is tough to integrate. It follows Fred Brennan, a man who suffers from brittle bone disease and is therefore wheelchair bound, the story of the Watkins father and son team ,and lastly the Q followers. Let's just call the last two groups "quirky" for the sake of being kind. And to try to integrate those communities in one documentary is just too challenging.

Trying to being open minded and allowing yourself to go down the rabbit hole with that crew of pathological liars and narcissists would not be easy. Add on the supremacists and the religious crackpots and hostile gamers and this was not a day trip to the beach. Fred Brennan seemed to have a change of heart. He was the only person spotlighted here who seemed the least bit redeemable.

It ultimately makes me ask an existential question of myself - If I had been born in Algeria to a household of devout Muslims, would I be a devout Muslim instead of a devout Christian?. Maybe I just want to believe? It seems to be the case with these QAnon folks. They live mundane work a day lives and seem to want to be part of something bigger. They are largely white, largely working class, and see their world slipping away from them because the US is becoming so integrated with the rest of the world and thus much more diverse. But still, to be taken in by this nonsense is just too much.

Excellent documentary. Presenting most of the information from the Q followers. The cynicism and ignorance from these people is mindblowing.

Ok, so the docu series is drawn-out and a bit boring. But what's really fascinating is the people behind Q and 8chan: Have you ever seen a group of people more pathetic and/or disgusting (inside and out)? Not so much from what they say exactly, but personalitywise. It amazes me that such a bunch of losers could amount any kind of following, real life or virtual.

Everyone needs to watch this to understand how these kind of conspiratorial thinkers live. The followers are very much serious about it because they are craving some way to make sense of the ever increasing corrupted world, and find a community of like minded cynics. But the leaders (codemonkey et al) are not serious people. They treat the real world as if it were a game because that is how they have lived their entire lives. Behind a computer screen, devoid of real human connection, and detached from reality.

I also really applaud the filmmaker. It cannot be easy to follow a story like this for so long through so many twists and turns, many of them dead ends, through the lies and drama and intentional deceit, and stay neutral and bipartisan enough to earn your subjects' trust. Brilliant work.

It is an interesting documentary but not exactly about Qanon. It is mostly focused on the creator of 8chan and the current owners of the website. It is suppose to be about finding the real Q but it is more like a reality show based on the relationship between these characters, full of drama. And it definitely doesn't need 6 episodes...

There might be a good two-hour documentary in this six hour mini-series, but after watching the first two episodes I'm out. I thought this was going to be about Q and the movement he/she spawned, instead I got the history of internet message boards. They spend a whole *hour* telling us how Q moved from 8-chan to 4-chan to 'The Storm' to post their cryptic messages. Or, they could have just said what I said in a voice over and moved on. It was like doing a documentary on the Kennedy assassination and spending an hour explaining how Oswald got his job at the Texas Book Depository. And for bonus negative points the music is grating and annoying.

Like the Nxivm cult documentary of last year, this is another HBO doc that needed a total re-think.

While it is bit long and sometimes technical, most could follow along. The director does a good job of seeing and interacting with the characters in a very natural way where one can see some of their natural tendencies and changes over time. If you're into politics and social movements, this is probably up your alley.

If you're a fan of non-fiction, or even to some extent true crime, then you'll appreciate the crap outta this. This is a very thoroughly investigated and structured map of a pretty bananas phenomenon.

This covers too much of the same ground over and over.

It's as though they shot way too much footage and refused to make good editorial decisions.

There is even an entire episode that has nothing to actually do with Q.

It's an interesting story, but it's not about Q.

There are some good points made, and it becomes obvious pretty quickly that the. Watkins' are pulling the strings of the morons that follow this nonsense.

The short series on VICE was actually better than this with no budget.

What is the Q? And what do I mean by that? Do I mean what the Question is or who the person(s) behind Q is/are? Think about it ... now maybe do not think about it. But you may wonder, who is this supposed to be for? Because it is a really tough subject - you don't want to troll the Q-lievers (? I am suspecting what they might be called), but you want to stay in a certain reality too.

Now this docu-series tries to be as respectful as possible to the ones who got sucked into the whole thing. It goes to lengths (maybe for some those lengths are too much) to explain where this came from - but the timeline gets muddled sometimes - it actually makes sense binging this, even if you get treated to some things you've heard before. You do get a different context though ... again very complicated.

One thing you should not actually expect in this: that it debunks everything. I reckon the filmmaker either didn't want to alienate a certain group (the Q-lievers as I called them) and thought the rest is intelligent enough to know better. At some points even a non-believer might feel the urge to dive into the conspiracies ... they are really quite enticing at some degree. And wouldn't it be so much easier to have an enemy you can just hate? Be it the Clintons, Gates or whoever else might fit into the "demon and child eating" prophecy.

But also at times you will cringe very hard at how crazy certain things are. The series gives many people a voice too ... it's kind of a shame we don't circle back to some of them ... like the first pair we see ... we see them later on too ... but there doesn't seem to be anything the filmmaker wants to let them know.

The heart of this ... is the search for Q though ... and one can make the argument that the person who might be Q reveals ... their identity at the very last episode. Maybe that is true, maybe it isn't ... one thing is for sure: you get quite the colorful characters ... unfortunately it also is quite maddening and saddening seeing how far out (not in a good sense) certain individuals have gone ...

I just watched the first two episodes today and when I checked out the response here I was shocked to see the main reasons behind why this is being negatively received. I don't really understand how everyone is finding this series as a bunch of unnecessary filler. This whole episode is about trying to uncover the motive behind this man purchasing and maintaining 8chan. I myself find that to be very interesting considering how vile the content is on there. When we meet the guy his behavior is so bizarre and psychotic it makes you even more curious as to his motives and how they may relate to QAnon. Maybe this guy has something to do with the information that's getting posted by Q on the site he he owns? I feel like this has been judged too early and given there's 4 more episodes I find it very possible for the information we're receiving now to end up being integral to what comes later on. I could be wrong though, and that's why I'm not giving this a star rating yet. Granted, if you simply just don't think anything that's being presented so far is interesting and I respect that. This show could end up being boring and pointless schlock, but I see the potential for this docu-series to be informative and impactful.

I came in pretty much blind to the details of Qanon. The first episode was quite interesting as they delved into the "Qtubers" and Q's rise to fame. But based on the impossible to get through second episode, it seems as if the director/editors were unsure what type of narrative to spin. Feels like a flat earth type of documentary that aims to make the viewer think of these people as the lowest common denominator. Especially with how they twisted gamergate. The second episode is basically entirely about the creators and owners of 8chan. And this Jim character is the least entertaining character I've ever had to watch. I'm sure he seemed interesting in person, but it has nothing to do with why anyone would watch a documentary on Q. While I don't believe in the Qanon movement, I think alienating the hundreds of thousands of those who do has proven to only strengthen their beliefs. And purposefully magnifying their blind spots while glossing over what they might find important will only increase their belief that the system is against them because they are into something.

The first two episodes jump around a lot and don't really lay out details in a way anything like a normal documentary would. This appears to be because the are intentionally letting Q people themselves lay out the story, which is a smart way to avoid death threats but is reliant on the narratives of people with disjointed and irrational thinking. They succeed in establishing that there are lot of the core Q people that are outright nut jobs and often of seriously compromised intellectual capacity and judgement.

It gives the impression we are witnessing the birth of a new religious cult along a similar line to scientology, but potentially much bigger. Even when the 'facts' underlying their beliefs are being torn apart the Q believers are capable of of some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to avoid acknowledging they have been sucked into a cult.

Episode 3 opens up the fascinating and key subject of the Luther Blissett group and the novel "Q" first published in Italian in 1999 which is obviously the origin and template for Q'Anon and makes the whole story take an L'ron Hubbard twist.

Interesting at first but then gets drawn out a little too much. If you want to learn more about the origins of QAnon this is for you.

If you are going to make a documentary about conspiracies, it doesn't help your case, to play on conspiracies yourself.

But the story of QANON is fascinating in itself (in a bad way), and that would have been enough, to make a good documentary about these horrible people and their deluded ideas.

As a bystander outside the United States, it is shocking to see this happen. One can only guess where this will go.

My guess is towards a new neo Nazi movement.

And that's really sad!

I've only watched the first episode and so far this feels like one of those shows with a few interesting tidbits and a LOT of filler. It also feels VERY careful, as if the authors know that they risk offending someone, no matter what they present on this topic... and they are a little scared? Granted, I sympathize, there are strong emotions on all sides and I'd be careful if Q came up in one of my conversations. I'll probably watch the next episode but.. my expectations are low. I can only hope I'll be proven wrong and this show picks up some real steam?.