This film is a documentary around the crime, the suspects, the court hearing and the subsequent evidence discovered during the 18 years they were incarcerated and how that new evidence led up to the men walking out of jail for the first time since they were teenagers. It centres around the area of West Memphis where in 1993, three boys aged 8 years old were murdered. The three men who were convicted for this: Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelly Jr & Jason Baldwin, were quiet teenagers who were into satanic music and related activities. These men were picked on by the police and media for their interests and linked to the crime in no plausible way and then convicted based on the confession of Jessie Misskelly that the three of them did kill those boys.
Over the years it came to light that Jessie was borderline intellectually retarded and that the police had interviewed and questioned him for 12 hours straight to get that confession. Only 46 minutes of those 12 hours was recorded and used as evidence.
The documentary itself is edited well and holds a huge amount of information. It is heavily weighted to the innocence of the three men and as such I felt that maybe there was some more information left out about the case but it does appear overwhelmingly obvious that these three men were innocent of the crime. The interviews are all top quality and the access the filmmakers got to everyone involved is comprehensive. Some of the archival footage is quite confronting so please be aware that you will see footage of the crime scene and photos of the post mortem which was hard to look at. This is dealt to the viewer with taste though and not in a glorified manner at all, and definitely helps tell the story of what occurred.
I never know what to think of these documentaries. I love the idea of watching them and learning about them and their content, but the fact that they are based on real world events and show real world footage makes a much deeper etch into my mind. I find it harder to push out the thoughts after the credits roll and often find myself still pondering them a few days later. If you can prepare yourself for that then I recommend watching this as a display of gross misconduct by the state, the court and the police. And wonder, if these three men didn't kill those boys and the person who did is still walking around today, who is it?
SCORE: 7/10
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