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Jan 18, 2024 · Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Netflix) New Netflix true crime documentary American Nightmare is leaving viewers hooked and horrified in equal measure. The three-part series follows the ...
- Bradley Russell
Rated: 4/5 Jan 20, 2024 Full Review Brian Lowry CNN.com What distinguishes American Nightmare, Netflix’s latest wrinkle on that formula, is watching the police fall prey to the same mentality ...
- (23)
- January 17, 2024
- Bernadette Higgins, Felicity Morris
- A true-crime series that finds small ways to transcend a familiar setup
- American Nightmare Gallery
- What's the best Netflix true-crime documentary?
- Verdict
By Steve Greene
Updated: Jan 22, 2024 11:42 pm
Posted: Jan 22, 2024 10:31 pm
The central events depicted in American Nightmare took place in the spring of 2015. As the first season of Serial and HBO’s The Jinx urged a renewed interest in true crime (and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” waited in the wings), an odd news story emerged from northern California. Initial news reports described an incident in the city of Vallejo, where a woman was kidnapped from her home, taken from the bed where she and her boyfriend were sleeping. An American public with a freshly developed taste for unsolved mysteries lapped up the coverage, which drew parallels between the hunt for Denise Huskins and one of the decade’s most popular fictional cases of a missing woman.
Knowing that any retelling of this story will be fraught with questions of a murky truth, series directors Bernadette Higgins and Felicity Morris first put their focus on Aaron Quinn, who went to local law enforcement after – in his words – being woken up by a team of kidnappers and then drugged as Denise was abducted from the home they shared. Aaron is framed in the way true-crime interview narrators so often are: sterile room, alternating camera angles, pregnant pauses while relaying details both horrific and bizarre (the alleged perpetrators disguised themselves in wetsuits, by Aaron’s telling). American Nightmare justifies its three-episode structure (it could have been roughly a 2-hour movie otherwise) by introducing new narrators as the story moves along the timeline.
Sprinkled in throughout are the dramatic reenactments that are standard for headline-grabbing stories like this one. Here, though, Higgins and Morris tone down the junky basic-cable aesthetics of their predecessors: Heavily-filtered, hazy flashbacks are replaced by something more visceral. A narrow, mostly point-of-view window into these recreations satisfyingly locks each chapter into a more personal perspective. An extreme close-up on an eyeball, repeated for effect through one extended stretch, is particularly chilling.
Tiger King
Making a Murderer
Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes
The Keepers
Amanda Knox
Other -- let us know in the comments.
The latest hit Netflix docuseries finds chilling and effective ways to go beyond the standard true-crime expectations. Yet, even as it ends up at a broader message beyond the unusual circumstances of a single kidnapping case, it’s hard to shake the idea that the overall structure of the show and its “twisty thriller” framing are working against wha...
- Steve Greene
Jan 17, 2024 · Powered by Reelgood. American Nightmare, directed by Bernadette Higgins and Felicity Morris (The Tinder Swindler), is a 3-part docuseries that examines the abduction of Denise Huskins in 2015 ...
Jan 19, 2024 · Her ordeal is chronicled in unflinching detail in American Nightmare (Netflix), the gripping new documentary from the team behind 2022 true-crime hit The Tinder Swindler.
Oct 10, 2024 · Directed by Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin. Cate Blanchett stars as a lusty, preening stateswomen in a geopolitical satire from the experimental filmmaker Guy Maddin. By Jeannette ...
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Jan 22, 2024 · American Nightmare is a step above the average Netflix docuseries, but its setup as a twisty thriller ultimately works against some of its eventual, big-picture ideas. Steve Greene. Read Review ...
