Documentaries are my favourite to watch and weirdly, those that count with murder, prision and WW2 are always on my Netflix list.
It has been a trend to take a story and make it into a documentary, such as ‘The Staircase’ that I have just finished watching and will publish a review later on.
However, in this case, Netflix has decided to turn this story and sandwich it into a movie-lenght piece.
As you are relating a real-life story, you can’t really mix and match parts of the story or take on a creative side and write it yourself. The story is written, it’s all about how you present it.
This is a particular heavy story and so, it should be handled with care. As they had a lot of footage, they decided not to narrate it but to edit and put the pieces together.
Having said that I have to add that it was made in a weird way. I believe they chose the best format having in consideration the footage available but the editing was laking seemlessness.
I am interested in keeping this review spoiler-free as all of them are and so I’ll put it the best way I can.
The beginning was well-made but very long, I see how important it is to introduce all the characters but I believe that not everything was necessary. If it were a series it would have been appropriate, and short even, but given the lenght it was too much.
The big drop of ‘who did it’ was made with suspence and I found myself with a face full of ‘shock’ after the veridict, however, it didn’t show much of the consequence nor investigation. Those two sides I consider very important. All we got was the talks with the investigators on the case and a few clips of them searching around.
Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this ‘fucked up’ (pardon my french) of a documentary. Also think it was important of Netflix to take on and invest on this project because it let’s the viewer be aware that everyone may be capable of murder.
The story is absolutely apalling but I would really recommend you to watch it as it is a short ‘movie’ that explains a lot in a ‘sandwitched’ kind of way.
Have you given this documentary a watch already? Drop me a comment and I’ll make sure to answer you whenever I can.
Also, the name ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’ makes me think that we should be expecting more ‘American Murder:……’, right?
Random Chipmunk 