Netflix
Stop us if you've heard this before, but there's a true crime documentary series on Netflix that's making a big splash. The appetite for such ventures seems limitless; It seems that as long as we can take a break and take a bathroom break every now and then, we really enjoy depraved and deviant behavior. But sometimes a series sneaks through that offers more than just tension, cheap thrills and hyperventilating aesthetics. And so “American Nightmare” was born, a quick, succinct work that even has a touch of investigative reporting verve. In short, it's worth the hype.
It's one of those stories that you might remember from the time it actually happened. In March 2015, a young man named Aaron Quinn called police and reported that his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, had been kidnapped from his home near the Bay Area city of Vallejo. His story was admittedly strange: soft-spoken, almost polite kidnappers in wetsuits forced him to drink a sedative, warned him not to call the police and mentioned a small ransom of $15,000. The police officers in question that Quinn eventually called made it clear that they thought Quinn was lying.
Then things got weird. Huskins resurfaced a short time later in her hometown of Huntington Beach, about 400 miles away, claiming her captors had sexually assaulted her and threatened her family if she told anyone. Vallejo police and the FBI concluded that she, too, was lying. FBI agent in charge David Sesma reportedly believed the couple had perpetrated a hoax inspired by the film “Gone Girl”; The media took this theory and ran with it. Huskins and Quinn were buried in bad press.
The true story, chronicled here by directors Bernadette Higgins and Felicity Morris (The Tinder Swindler) with a keen sense of narrative pacing and visual restraint, is nowhere near as salacious, and if you don't know the details and want to avoid spoilers, you may want to stop reading.
There's actually a scary villain here: a serial rapist and peeping Tom named Mathew Moller, a disbarred lawyer and Iraq War veteran with all-American looks and an MO that included duct tape, tranquilizers, zip ties, and blacked-out goggles. But the threat that really stands out in the filmmakers' portrayal is law enforcement negligence, including a pattern of victim-blaming and ulterior motives that leaves two innocent people writhing out of arrogance and laziness.
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Even considering the bizarre details of Huskins' kidnapping, which on the surface seem to strain credibility, the revelations about how cavalierly local and federal police threw her and Quinn under the bus are alarming. Beneath American Nightmare's attention-grabbing headlines lies the story of a shameful systemic failure. (It's worth noting here that Misty Carausu, a Bay Area cop who chose to investigate rather than make assumptions, turns out to be the hero. If “American Nightmare” is an indictment of bad police work, it is also an acknowledgment of good police work .)
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Denise Huskins is interviewed on American Nightmare. Netflix
Higgins and Morris deserve praise in many ways. First, they tell a compelling, detailed story in under three hours, whereas a more sensationalized, watered-down version of American Nightmare would have unnecessarily taken five or six episodes (as such shows often do). They create suspense in a way that doesn't involve withholding evidence, and they weave their raw materials – interviews, interrogation footage, sharp reenactments – with a deceptively high level of craftsmanship. Not only do they know how to tell their story; They also know how to trust him without the need for shock tactics and emotional manipulation.
“American Nightmare” is a strong work in a quickly dated and often cheesy documentary genre. That's another way of saying it's a lot better than it needs to be.