bangiras

1/10

This is the worst "documentary" I've ever seen, not even exaggerating. Why should we care about some actors rambling about their life and thoughts that are tangentially related to the JBR case? Like that guy who's into whipping nipples. What the _hell?!_ I know that some people think that the "casting/interview" format is neat... but just because it's unique, doesn't mean that it's good. It's pretty clunky, akin to somebody filming a scene in dozens of different angles because wow, a fight scene filmed from under a chair, and then from behind the house plant? No wait, what if I film somebody using the bathroom even when it doesn't relate to anything? UNIQUE!!! Although that would have been significantly more interesting than this dumpster fire of a documentary. I feel bad for the children roped into participating into this. Their segments are just pretty damn awkward and it seems like they're just there so the director can feed them lines. **TL;DR:** The director is a hack, 'nuff said. Either she's trying to get around paying royalties like another Trakt comment said, she's clinging to the JBR "brand" to get attention for her own original idea, or both. If I could give this 0 stars, I would. I guess I'll avoid Kitty Green's works to make up for it.

2016moonlight

7/10

This was one of the creepiest things i have ever watched, but also one of the most interesting documentaries. People who go into Casting JonBenet expecting a documentary about the murder case will come out of it completely disappointed and even angry that they wasted their time (as is proven by the comments left on this page). However, if you approach this film as a piece on how true crime stories, especially unsolved mysteries, impact not only the community closest to it, but media culture in general, it's an extraordinarily enlightening piece of cinema. There has always been a weird fixation and interest in true crime stories, one i'm myself guilty of, mostly stemming from a regular person's inability to comprehend how someone can do such horrible acts. That's why cases like JonBenet Ramsey's become media circuses and cultural events that everyone knows/hears about. This documentary explores exactly just that: the myth that forms around an unsolved murder mystery, the urge everyone has to share theories and make sense of something so senseless and terrifying, and watching these people, most from the city the crime happened, all run wild with their conspiracies and their takes on it, going as far as sharing extremely personal stories, is fascinating, if also greatly uncomfortable. Of course, to this premise, you have the added insanity natural to people who enjoy acting, and who enjoy pushing themselves to a place as dark as the mind of someone who'd be able to commit these atrocities. Great actors are praised for their performances of serial killers and other disturbing characters/people, but when you shine a light on the process of getting to that place and the motivations behind wanting to play one of those characters - thus reminding you over and over that these things actually happened and not letting you disconnect enough to enjoy and marvel at those performances - it becomes a really uncomfortable watching experience. A lot of people interviewed in this documentary were weird themselves, but then we all know actors are all peculiar. If the director had chosen to just interview random people of the city of Boulder, the result would have probably been very different, but instead she took the very unique perspective of interviewing actors auditioning for the roles of this family, people who went into that studio with the predisposition to act as a murderer. When you think about how close these people are to the crime and then think about how willing they still were to dress as these people from their community and act out this horrendous set of events, you get this creepy feeling that makes the whole thing even worse (as if simply the story of the murder wasn't creepy enough). And that's why this documentary is so disturbing, but so weirdly brilliant. It's a think-piece and a social experiment on the impact of the culture of true crime mystery, it is NOT a documentary about simply the story of what happened that night.