Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

**NOTE -- This review is focused on the documentary itself, not the crimes and abusive behavior depicted therein. I think the mother here is a toxic nightmare of a human being, and the daughter needs psychiatric help, but that has no bearing on how I feel about this as a documentary. Just want to make that clear.** By and large, it is expected that a documentary be an impartial recorder of history. It's why you don't see documentarians stopping the lion from chasing down the gazelle; they're supposed to be recording history, not making it. When a documentarian becomes part of the story (or at least can't keep their views out of it), the documentary suffers. At best, the documentary ends up prostrating at the altar of its subject (like Direct To Video or Secret Apartment); at worst, you get movies made with an axe to grind or an intent to deceive (Super-Size Me, Loose Change). But there are exceptions to the rule. If the subject calls for it, sometimes it is the documentarian's responsibility to pursue an angle and present their case. Nobody told the makers of Unknown Number this. This "documentary" was made seemingly with the mandate of "don't do anything to earn Netflix a defamation lawsuit". The documentary concerns Lauryn, a 14 year old girl who had a boyfriend, Owen. One day, she started getting rude and vulgar text messages about Owen breaking up with her. They never found out who sent them. But a year passes, and Lauryn's mom decides she needs to figure out who it was, so SHE starts texting even ruder things to her own daughter in the hopes (and I'm not kidding here) that it would inspire conversation at school and maybe make the original perpetrator surface. How this convoluted scheme works exists only in her head, because that's absolutely moronic. Mind you, she is texting her own daughter, at a very vulnerable age, about how she should kill herself and how her boyfriend hates her because she won't have sex or even do oral, how she's ugly and worthless and nobody likes her ... and she's texting this stuff to her daughter for HOURS A DAY. Literally hundreds of pages of texts were submitted in court. Do the documentarians push her on this? Call her out on this nonsensical, batshit insane idea? Nope, not even a little bit. Do they call her out when the mom switches her story later about how the original texts triggered some repressed trauma and this is somehow connected something something something poor me? Nope. Do they hold her accountable for the massive financial fraud she was pulling on her family that made them move houses five times in a year and had them unable to pay bills? Not a bit. A responsible documentarian would hold her feet to the fire, would put her in a situation where she either had to take responsibility or expose herself as a piece of garbage, and instead, the people who made this decided the soft-focus, "both sides now" puff piece was the way to go. It was not. Director Skye Borgman ought to be ashamed of herself for this malfeasance of a movie. The mother is not just shown deference, she goes unchallenged 100% of the run time, as if she's some misunderstood victim in all this. Unknown Number doesn't even have the guts to call her mentally ill. It wants to give everybody their chance and frame it as this poor family that got torn apart by mental health issues and a misguided mom's poor choices, and it is repugnant. Borgman had a responsibility here, and she chose to be a fly on the wall. Skye Borgman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for this, and Netflix ought to be ashamed for allowing this on their platform. Don't watch this. Don't give this narcissistic lunatic the attention this movie is designed to give her. Don't validate this terrible filmmaker's choice to stay hands-off. Don't give this fraud your energy. Mark it as "not interested" and move on.