Abducted in plain sight | View review

By now you should already know how much I love to watch documentaries.

Last night, I watched a new addition to Netflix called ‘Abducted in plain sight’ and I believe we have in our hands a ‘Mona Lisa’ problem.

What I call a ‘Mona Lisa’ problem is when a piece of work/art is ignored to something that is more trendy. When I went to Louvre I saw so many great masterpieces – especially the sculptures that were magnificent – in these rooms, there were also a few tourists with me but nothing of a claustrophobic effect.

‘Where are all of them? I saw so many people in the entrance and in the queue, how have they disappeared?’

Truth is, they didn’t. I was to find everyone in the ‘Mona Lisa room’. I barely could breathe or even see the cross-harmed girl. It is a nice painting but nothing that I haven’t seen previously, to be honest.

Anyways, with this documentary, I believe we have the same problem.

Many documentaries now have fallen into a trend. We have the example of ‘The Ted Bundy Tapes’ that even lead into controversy – as they announced a movie of the story using Zach Efron as Ted and people thought he was too handsome to do that role (I believe that is one of the reasons why that was a good decision). Or even ‘Fyre: the big event that never happened’ with a smaller reputation but still seen as relevant.

This documentary I believe to be of the same calibre of Ted Bundy’s story but had a smaller success.

It talks about a girl that was abducted twice in the ’70s by the same guy, called ‘B’. It is a really interesting story of a little girl that was brainwashed and carried in her free will to do terrible things as she thought she was doing the right thing.

‘The Ted Bundy tapes’ have such success because of the tapes shown in the documentary of him talking about what he did (in the third person) and due to the immensity of the crime that leads to its popularity. ‘Abducted in plain sight’ has tapes of ‘B’ with Jan (the girl), phone calls of him with the family and most importantly, Jan explaining to her what happened in detail.

This has everything to be a great documentary and yet, it hasn’t made the charts. I believe it to be because of the lack of awareness as I only discovered it because of a random article on Facebook. So much potential.

Really enjoyed learning about her story and I hope to bring some awareness to this documentary.