As I said whenever ago, I enjoyed the first episode of this well enough, even though I had certain misgivings about it. Pretty well made “internet summons all internet stuff about knowing all about the internet to catch a proper fucking cunt, sort of” sort of stuff. Zipped along, interviewees were compelling. Arresting, whether you knew the details or you didn’t. Should it have zipped along at such an entertaining pelt? Dunno, that’s a question for another time.
The second episode I thought was fine. The third I thought was absolutely fucking rank.
As was the case for everyone else here, it seems, that “who are the real cannibals?” moment at the end angered me so much it took all the medication in me not to kick the laptop off the fucking roof.
You don’t get to pull that sort of move if all you’ve done for the past three hours is titter about how much atrocity footage you’re threatening to dangle before the audience. Very deliberately, very cynically playing a really pretty seedy game of bait and switch that took its cues from Grizzly Man but ended up coming off more like one of the later Faces of Death sequels. May as well have been introduced by a fucking, I dunno, Donald D. Morbid MD. “I have seen things that you can never see! But you might see, if you hang about a bit. But you’ll be the bad guy. I’ll explain later. Or, I dunno, I’ll just point at the screen all fucking Chief Wiggum and hope you can come up with something that’ll make you feel bad enough on your own for we’ve spent three hours trying and we’re coming up with sweet fuck all, we just thought this would probably get funded easily enough.”
This was not a film about “why do we feel compelled to watch this stuff?” It was a slick three hour true crime procedural with a completely unearned “WHY ARE YOU WATCHING THIS STUFF!? IT’S YOU THAT ARE THE BAD!” at the end. It hadn’t a meaningful philosophical thought in it is head, it was empty as fuck and it was fucking offensive.
Compare this to a film like Martyrs. A fictional film, granted, but one that deals with similar material and which has ingrained in its bones the questions that culminate in the MASSIVE FUCKING QUESTIONS it asks at the end. This garbage of a thing thing played Netflix Sleuth Show for a bit and then in the last thirty seconds made an absolutely cock-fingered attempt at profundity that was absolutely laughable.
Mentioning laughable, there wasn’t one fucking thing in this that wasn’t said a thousand times better in the first series of American Vandal.
Load of fucking pish.