Making a Murderer
Netflix
Dec 17, 2015
Web Exclusive
Netflix’s 10-part true crime series, spanning three-times as many years, is an immediately engrossing, roller coaster of a documentary from the writer-director team, Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi. Making a Murderer instantly lands among the upper echelon of investigative crime reporting—joining the likes of the Serial podcast, Dear Zachary, and Paradise Lost—as it chronicles the unbelievable and often infuriating saga of Wisconsin convict, Steven Avery.
Avery, whose family’s name was less than reputable in his hometown of Manitowoc County, was wrongly accused of a violent rape in 1985. Specifically targeted by a vindictive sheriff’s department, with whom he had personal squabbles, Avery was thrown in jail at the age of 23, despite ample evidence and alibis supporting his claims of innocence, evidence that even inculpated a known sexual predator. Avery languished in prison for 18-years, until his conviction was overturned, though by that point, his marriage had dissolved, and he’d been forced to remove his children from his visitation list, progeny that included newborn twins at the time of his arrest. State politicians rallied around Avery upon his release, who soon stood to receive upwards of a $30 million dollar settlement from the county. Mere days before his civil suit went to trial, however, Avery again found himself facing charges—this time, for murder.
Every bit as gripping as this year’s earlier docu-series hit, Making a Murderer is the anti- The Jinx. Whereas HBO’s miniseries investigated a murderer consistently able to slip through the justice system’s fingers, Netflix’s spotlights an often-innocent man suffocating within a biased and corrupt system’s grasp. Sitting down to watch Making a Murderer for the first time, it’s hard to imagine that someone repeatedly accused of such heinous crimes could at all be innocent. Yet, over the course of 10-hours, the filmmakers flip expectations, instead asking how any police agency could so seemingly willfully target the same man time and again. Demos and Ricciardi craft astounding access to parties on all sides of the investigations into a harrowing and impossibly frustrating expose. Though only four-episodes were made available for advance review, they proved three more than necessary to declare that Steven Avery’s collective convictions could well prove one of the most egregious violations of the justice system in modern America. (www.netflix.com)
Author rating: 8.5/10
Average reader rating: 10/10
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December 20th 2015
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