Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, sees its population of 24 grow by one. As the new resident's behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor.
Welcome to Leith is a gripping documentary following white supremacist Craig Cobb's attempt to take over a tiny North Dakota town. The story is inherently compelling and genuinely unsettling, capturing small-town democratic fragility against extremist infiltration. As a documentary, traditional 'acting' is replaced by real subjects who vary in articulateness and screen presence — the residents are earnest but not particularly compelling on camera. Cinematography is functional and competent for the doc format, capturing the bleak prairie landscape effectively without being visually distinctive. The subject matter — white nationalist rural takeover — was a fairly novel documentary focus for 2015, predating much of the mainstream conversation about domestic extremism. The ending feels somewhat anticlimactic; Cobb's removal is procedurally satisfying but the broader threat remains unresolved, leaving audiences with an unsettled rather than cathartic conclusion.