CW: references to animal abuse, since it's part of the movie.
It sucks. That it won an Emmy tells me that everyone at the Emmys is embarrassed about what they do. Spoiling this because I don't think you should watch it. Here are the main ingredients for why it's not only awful as a documentary but has an awful message:
First, the documentary relies heavily on sensationalist videos of animal torture/murder. Fuck off with that shit, not even a "graphic warning" thing, and they cut to the footage like 40x to remind you that this guy murdered cats. I'm a vegetarian and get easily triggered by that, what the fuck. I know they don't actually show the cats getting killed, but why do they keep reminding us of the footage? They could have done a Grizzly Man Werner Herzog move and showed people reacting to and describing the video, without actually showing parts of it. Or okay, shown a little bit of each one, but then not cut back to them constantly. Every time I saw the kitten's paw on the plastic bag my heart broke, and they knew what they were doing.
Then, it laments in the final ten minutes that this was not the story of victim, but the story of murderer. "No one is telling the story of Jun Lin," one interviewee says, in a bloated 3 hour documentary that talks about him only in relation to the killer, indicting the film makers. You could've made a movie about Jun Lin dude.
Finally, it shames the audience for watching the movie because the movie is overly sensationalist. The movie ends with "and you, audience, who just watched a 3 hour documentary, are you complicit in the murder of Jun Lin?" How arrogant can you be, you made a movie you're ashamed of and tried to make it my fault because I wanted to watch some true crime, which has been around for a long time and is not going away. You did a shitty job telling a story in a genre you have no respect for. It's trying to indict the audience for their voyeurism yet references the cat murder videos dozens of times with footage from the videos. Wow, this documentary, it really says a lot about society that we like to see stories about people who try to imitate Catch Me If You Can in real life.
Okay, but also it's just bad in general:
- Bloated beyond belief. Needless cul-de-sac storylines like the Namibia plotline. Actually, what was the point of the Namibia story? An imposter lights a cat on fire, the internet hounds him for it, and he kills himself? Because of the internet? Or not, because he had depression? Real Black Mirror energy here: "technology huh? Good until it's bad, I say."
- There is no sense of timeline presented after the murder until it is way too late. They dwell forever on what the Montreal police did after the body is found. Second part could have been twenty minutes. It's up to the audience to realize the timeline from murder-capture is like 6 days.
- Real Boomer energy around how to use technology. A guy explains how to use Google Street View at one point. They present Facebook as this really dynamic, edgy platform?
- The Facebook group's sleuthing is just like, literally using Google. In fact, sometimes not even thinking about doing that until later on. They learn Luka Magnotta's name because Luka Magnotta tells them. The most they do is learn an address that Luka used to live at, and then they're just watching/consuming the hunt with no role.
- The documentary goes through how painstaking the frame-by-frame research, yet Luka's mother is the one who points out the second pair of hands???? Did the sleuthers miss this in the frame-by-frame. Actually, whose hands were they? You just dropped this!!!
- Speaking of Luka's mother, what is her deal with animal abuse? She thinks animal abuse advocates are psychos? Is it just that it's "Manny?" Did she know when he was making the videos, or did he tell her, or what? Her family member told her, she said? What? How did they find out?
- The Basic Instinct montage is completely unearned. It's going for a Keyser Soze moment but the reveal is that Luka staged the murder to look like a film he likes. I mean, I've seen both Tarantino movies and the Wolf Pack, that's just a thing people do, except they don't normally commit real murder while they do it.
- What happened to Jun's head or hands? Apparently they were sent to elementary schools??? You left this out!
IMO the majority of the recent uptick in “true crime” stuff has been part of a broader TV trend of finding middlebrow ways of selling what’s fundamentally really trashy and exploitative content. Netflix is one of the worst offenders in this regard, Tiger King is essentially an A&E series for people who think they’re above that.
You nailed the bs the doc pulls in those final moments about trying to shame the viewers for the shit the filmmaker did. The story didn’t have to be told that way motherfuckers. And I really really really wish they didn’t show any of the footage. Maybe just closeups of any identifying features that the interviewees are talking about. But by showing large chunks of the videos, they’re basically giving the murderer the kind of attention he wanted. But yeah, wish I could wipe some of those images from my brain as well as the songs he used during them as well, hopefully I can forget those.
Boy they really pat themselves on the back for being sanctimonious dipshits
there's a part at the end near the end where the filmmaker reminds us of all of the videos - you see their eyes, their paws, their fear - without any warning. My partner and I tried to skip every video but they still got us with that montage near the end, just before they condescend to their audience for daring to watch their movie.
And yeah, like, they made the movie. They chose to do this. They got fucking paid to do this, and then they're all "oh won't someone think of Jun Lin? Why won't anyone tell his story?" I didn't really have an opinion on the Emmys, but how bored and ashamed of yourself do you have to be to reward this. Why is the filmmaker even making true crime?
The story of Luka Magnotta could have been really interesting, but they just botched this.
This is on the same level as that game where you put people on a train and try to get as many people on it to reach the end of the line, but it turns out the people were jews and the destination is Auschwitz (but you don't know until the end) and people think it's so fucking deep
Imma be real with you Netflix, I ain't watching cats getting murdered.
did the clerk at the internet cafe/convenience store really see the dude looking himself up online ? did he really make the connection with the killer's face while simultaneously looking at the guy's pic in the news ?
seems contrived somehow
Damn this is like a spiritual successor to This is Sus, thank you for your sacrifice
yeah like, I knew a bit of what I was signing up for, but that they turn the blame for the production of the film to me and not the actual filmmaker was so immature. The twist felt like a BFA senior thesis: "and the audience is a part of the murder."
