surveyed 44 critical responses and judged 98% of them to be positive, with an average rating of 7.92 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Wild Wild Country succeeds as an intriguing examination of a forgotten piece of American history that must be seen to be believed." Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com wrote "by handling this story so intelligently and by opening its heart to a very complicated idea of good and evil, Wild Wild Country has a profound, mesmerizing power itself". In 2018, Wild Wild Country won the Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
Criticism
Some have criticized Wild Wild Country for leaving out critical information regarding the activities of the Rajneesh followers, particularly regarding sexual assault of women and children as well as possible intent to unleash an AIDS epidemic. Journalist Win McCormack wrote that "Where the filmmakers have fallen down on the job is in the area of interpretation. They have not addressed squarely some of the more important issues raised by their film, and have left others out completely. The latter category includes a few of the cult’s most odious practices, as well as the true extent of the threat it posed not only to its immediate neighbors in Oregon, but to the entire world." Jane Stork, one of the main sources for this documentary, reported in her autobiography Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom that her own children were sexually abused during her time in Rajneeshpuram. This was not included in the documentary.
The Osho International Foundation, which co-administers Rajneesh's estate and operates the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India, responded to the docuseries on their website Osho Times, saying that "Unfortunately, the docuseries fails to explore key aspects and so does not give a clear account of the real story behind the story", and arguing that the events in Oregon were part of "a U.S. government conspiracy, from the White House on down, aimed at thwarting Osho’s vision of a community based on conscious living."
