Throughout the course of this documentary (and the one that was compiled afterwards) we watch interviews where individuals are led to give a particular answer, either by another person, by an attorney during a trial, in conversations with media representatives or simply addressing the filmmakers' camera. Answers are always ones, the subject believes, what the listener wants to hear.
I was really looking forward to watching this. I recently got a lot into documentaries, and I felt as if this one had something fascinating and unusual.
With the recent release of the closing chapter to the trilogy, Paradise Lost: Purgatory (2011), and the Peter Jackson-funded West of Memphis (2012), it seemed a perfect time to re-visit the original HBO documentary that focused on the original trial of the accused now known as the West Memphis Three. Knowing now that they have only recently been released in 2011, the first thing that shocked me about the first film was realising it was made way back in 1996, and the trial was back in 1993.
This entire documentary very much reminds me of the Leopold and Loeb case which happened in 1924. 19-year-old Nathan Leopold and 18-year-old Richard Loeb kidnapped and murdered a child whose body, the state alleged, was molested before and after death.
I came to this expecting something more or less gratuitous, a ghastly backwoods crime along with some lurid mystery. It does open with the mangled bodies of children discovered by Arkansas police in the woods and we go on to experience the baleful place that surrounds this crime, ruled by a vengeful god.
Just watch it. Nothing I can say would do this documentary justice.
That's really all there is to it. This film is raw.
After you watch these three Paradise Lost films, YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF to find a follow-up film called "West of Memphis" that you will simply not believe. I put off watching these films because I wanted them to have as much closure as possible - and I remember when these crimes happened - although they barely made the national news back then.
In 1993 West Memphis, Arkansas, three young boys Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch are kidnapped and brutally murdered. Three teen outsiders Jessie Misskelley Jr.
