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The show is also an indictment of the cult-like, often rubbish-like, world of wellness influencers on social media.
Masterfully crafted show - Apple Cider Vinegar. Picture Supplied.
Hope is an easy commodity to sell, and that’s why it’s so dangerous.
Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar shows just how destructive trading in any kind of faith can be. Con artist Belle Gibson rode in on a tsunami and left behind shattered lives, wallets and a collective who were reeled in and taken for fools. For Gibson, it all went right, until it didn’t.
The show is also an indictment of the cult-like, often rubbish-like, world of wellness influencers on social media.
Apple Cider Vinegar unpacks the rise and fall of Belle Gibson, an Australian social media sensation who wowed audiences in the early 2010s with her miraculous tale of self-healing.
She claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer through clean eating and alternative therapies, building an empire on the promise of hope and holistic wellness.
But when investigative journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, tipped off by a whistleblower, started digging, they pulled back the veil of social media opacity.
Gibson had never had cancer at all. Besides her false medical claims, promises of charitable donations from her lucrative wellness app proved to be just as fabricated.
This is a dramatized, somewhat fictionalised account, as Netflix called it, of a story based on a lie.
“Anyone with a phone can walk into a supermarket, point at a bag of chips, and declare it’s going to give you cancer,” medical practitioner Dr Jonathan Redelinghuys said.
“They’ll tell you to avoid sugar, fat, MSG, and salt. It’s a never-ending list, and people believe it.”
It’s the scourge of social media and made frauds like Belle Gibson a lot of money.
“We all want to be well,” he said, “and that in turn is leveraging hope. Yet most of these apps and unproven medical claims just leave people hopeless at the end of it all.”
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To illustrate the cruelty of Gibson’s scam, the story brings in a young boy who suffered from the same cancer as she allegedly was cured from.
But the treatment was expensive, and in an almost unforgivable act, the con artist committed to raising cash for the child’s treatment.
He appeared in her social media timelines, and she was lauded for her magnanimity. However, the funds never materialised for the boy.
Chad Thomas, an organised crime investigator from IRS Forensic Investigations, said that fraudsters walk amongst us in all shapes and forms.
“What is particularly concerning about the case of Belle Gibson, is that she lied about having a serious non-existent cancer condition, used a genuinely sick child who had cancer to further her misrepresentations, and caused people to not have potentially lifesaving medical procedures – all for financial gain and for social media and mainstream media recognition.
Belle Gibson epitomises a con artist – she was confident and convincing in her sick scheme.”
Apart from tracking Gibson’s con, a parallel is drawn with her contemporary at the time. Another cancer patient, Milla Blake, really has cancer.
She was also a proponent of natural healing and nontraditional methods of treatment that at first appeared to have saved her life.
Blacke was painted as a kind, well-educated and sensible woman who attended the expensive Hersch Institute in Mexico, which claims to cure cancer by using a strict diet of fruit and vegetables and coffee enemas.
Yet, for some reason, her book, her story, did not attract the kind of cult-like following that Gibson achieved.
Blake’s character appears to have been based on the late Jessica Ainscough who ultimately succumbed to the disease.
Gibson’s con initially had unstoppable momentum. She developed a wellness app that raked in substantial cash, hosted talks and seminars, and became a media darling.
She was about to publish a cookbook when it hit the proverbial fan. When the media outed her.
This is how stories must be told. Netflix first introduced the format of fictionalised semi-documentary storytelling with the tale of Anna Sorokin in Inventing Anna.
She was the German heiress with New York high society wrapped around her middle finger. She eventually stumbled over her own chutzpah.
It’s wildly entertaining and perfectly unpeels the onion of human behaviour, stupidity, con-ability, and naivete.
Apple Cider Vinger is shot beautifully. It’s got quirks that make it imminently enjoyable like cast members sharing the fact that Gibson received zilch from the producers.
The use of visual storytelling, ace editing and the way the camera emotes scenes. Its expressions and subtle changes in the vividness of colour make for irresistible eye candy.
Kaitlyn Dever delivers an incredible performance.
She becomes Belle Gibson along with a supporting cast that doesn’t just shine but spins a web of believability that draws in the audience.
The producers have created an absolute gem of a story, based on one woman’s ability to bullshit the world.
Apple Cider Vinegar is an absolute must watch.
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