American Murder: The Family Next Door - 2020
See my review on The Thin Blue Line for how this one falls short. (And how to do this sort of thing nearly perfectly).
Put simply, I appreciated how American Murder eschewed narration and voiceover in favor of spoken eyewitness testimony. The trick here is that the filmmakers use editing of these folks' words to move the story along (and, in the process, create a solid wave of suspense and tension). The trouble with American Murder is not a failure of technique, however, but one of content. This just isn't the fullest treatment of the Watts family. Much is left unmined. I know this not because I'm some true crime junkie, but rather because the three of four articles I read online when the actual case was breaking contained key facts which are just not here.
Don't get me wrong, I was hooked on every minute of this. It was just the rare time when I wanted even MORE of the background and details leading up to the fateful night when murder occurred. Shanann's return, it would turn out, was not simply a beginning, but an ending as well.
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