‘Untold: The Liver King’ Netflix Review - A Modern Myth Unraveled

Brian Johnson, better known as the Liver King, is one of the most outlandish figures to emerge from the collision of influencer culture and modern masculinity—and Untold: The Liver King captures his bizarre rise and fall with sharp wit and unflinching honesty. Directed by Joe Pearlman, this 70-minute documentary offers more than just a portrait of a man who eats raw liver and preaches “ancestral living”; it’s a reflection on the absurdities of online fame, the commodification of masculinity, and the lengths people will go to sell a fantasy.

At first glance, Johnson appears like a caricature: shirtless, bearded, and perpetually yelling about “ancestral tenets” while gnawing on raw animal organs. His brand, built on rejecting modernity in favor of a primal lifestyle, preaches living like a caveman, minus, of course, the smartphone, luxury supplements, and multi-million-dollar home filled with novelty weapons and meat-themed decor. Pearlman smartly frames the Liver King not as an inspirational guru, but as a walking contradiction, whose every move seems unintentionally satirical.

The film doesn’t try to sell you on Liver King’s philosophy. It doesn’t need to. Pearlman trusts viewers to see the irony in a man denouncing modern comfort while living in a mansion with a kitchen throne and product shelves lined like a GNC store. Visual gags—like the AK-47-shaped lamps and gratuitous displays of masculinity—say more than any narration could. It's a world so performatively primal that it loops back around to pure theater.

And yet, Liver King isn’t just a punchline. As the documentary digs into Johnson’s backstory, a more layered character begins to emerge. The absence of a father figure, a childhood marked by insecurity, and an obsession with muscle-bound action heroes like Rambo all feed into the persona he eventually built. Liver King didn’t just create a brand—he created a fantasy version of himself and tried to live inside it.

But reality has a way of crashing through. The documentary takes a tonal shift when it hits the steroid scandal that cracked Johnson’s primal facade wide open. After years of denying performance-enhancing drugs, it’s revealed that Johnson was spending over $11,000 a month on a steroid regimen—news that betrayed fans and undermined the foundation of his “natural” fitness empire. The Liver King persona was supposed to prove that raw liver and push-ups could build a superhuman body. Instead, it confirmed what most already suspected: the body was synthetic, the lifestyle mostly a show.

To the filmmakers’ credit, they don’t let Johnson off the hook. While he expresses regret and admits to being wrong “about almost everything,” his contrition feels more like rebranding than reckoning. The documentary ends with him outlining a new venture—a produce business for “primals” who now, conveniently, also eat fruit. It’s less a fall from grace than a pivot, delivered with the same straight-faced absurdity as everything else.

Untold: The Liver King is part character study, part cultural critique, and part circus. Whether you see Johnson as a con artist, a victim of his own myth-making, or just a uniquely American creation, the film invites you to gawk, laugh, and maybe—just maybe—reflect on the machinery that makes people like him possible.

Final Score- [8/10]
Reviewed by - Neerja Choudhuri
Follow @NeerjaCH on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times