Premise: An investigation into the death of a young woman uncovers many new truths about her and her father.
Netflix is getting really good at “Dateline Documentaries”. These are true crime documentaries that stay right around 90 minutes. There’s nothing particularly cinematic about them. They look much more like those 2-hour Dateline special investigations. On the one hand, I’m glad Netflix doesn’t force all these into multi-part documentary series. As a series The Girl in the Picture has several good revelations that could end an episode and make you move right to the next, but there isn’t that much content to fill out the rest of an episode. So a movie works much better. On the other hand, I do wish Netflix had more of a branding for these movies. Put them in a collection called “CrimeFlix” or something. They don’t need to be moved to episodes of a series like a Black Mirror. Just have a signifier to let me know The Girl in the Picture or The Tinder Swindler are more TV news magazine than documentary film.
Even though The Girl in the Picture isn’t theater quality, it’s a good story. There are a lot of twists. Even when I saw the twists coming, I was amazed that this was a true story and not a Law & Order episode. This story covers many decades. Unearthing the truth was as much about investigation as it was luck. It was interesting hearing all the ways the story branched out. It doesn’t matter all that much that the filmmaking is nothing special. Sometimes I love getting sucked into a random Dateline or 20/20. The same goes for a random Netflix crime doc.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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