Making a Murderer

Tries to be Paradise Lost but the problem is that it's horribly dishonest and leaves out huge details to paint this narrative of this "aww shucks" hillbilly who got fucked by the government. Truth is, Steven Avery is a sociopath who murdered Teresa Halbach with 100% certainty. I encourage you to read about his other crimes which include molesting his own family member and lighting a cat on fire just because. If you fell for this, congrats, now you see why film is used as propaganda.

More of a study in audience manipulation than anything else. Spend 10 minutes reading about the case (after the long 10 hour viewing time), and you'll see what evidence and information was conveniently left out of the documentary. Avery is a shitty human being. His 2nd wife tried to off herself with rat poison to get away from him. He was also attempting to build a "torture chamber." Just because the state is full of assholes who suck at their profession doesn't make Avery an innocent man.

The question this documentary poses has little to do with guilt and everything to do with the process. The real question is: Did Steve and Brendan get a fair trial? The answer is no. Not at all.

Just a few of the million things I could say about this. Google image search Dolores Avery to see not only how depressing this show is, but how depressing middle America is. Dean Strang may be the only likable person in Wisconsin. How does Steven Avery get 2 wives and a girlfriend while I"m over here with 0 rape/murder convictions all by myself? This definitely feels less fair and unbiased than its contemporaries (Paradise Lost and The Thin Blue LIne). Will the Packers win the Superbowl in 2016?

Always watchable soap opera that at least makes a pretty strong case for a Brendan Dassey retrial but fails to land a killer blow in the Avery case and so the final episode tends to drift nowhere fast. Nor does it ever truly find its way inside the situation in the manner that was done in, for example, THE STAIRCASE. Nevertheless, numerous inadequacies of the American justice system are made plain (including the role of television, which is not really thematised as such). A bit un-self-critical.

Expertly examines some of the systemic failures of our justice system. Without getting in to the outcome or my belief about innocence or guilt, it's absolutely clear that there was wild police, prosecutor, and defense attorney misconduct here. I'm frankly astounded that two attorneys in particular have not been disbarred (one for reasons unrelated to the Avery case). Edit: S2 brings this down a bit. I appreciate they wanted to address everything, but it becomes a slog.

I was only going to watch an episode or two before going to bed, but I ended up getting totally caught up in the misfortune of Steven Avery that I stayed up all night watching the whole 10 episodes! An amazing look into how dangerous local law can be, and how hopeless it is to fight it once you're on the wrong side of the wrong people. Scary in fact. This does get a little stagnant with the later episodes with endless trials and you can't help but feel it was a little one-sided.

MaM is a well manufactured documentary with no other focus diluting its subject. My main issue though, is how heavily slanted the depiction is towards the subject, in saying that, it had to be to paint the picture that injustice had occurred. Still, we rarely see any counter-balance argument that doesn't have an underhanded reason as to why it made the final edit. It's such a sensational story it's worth a watch for the debate afterwards, all while Avery sits in a cell trying to learn the law.

A well-made documentary that is hurt by the the film-makers deliberately distorting the truth to paint a one-sided narrative. If the documentary had decided to focus more on the failure of the American justice system as whole it might have been worth overlooking key pieces of evidence as it did. As a factual look into the actual case it is borderline criminal, pun intended.

I was going to give a much higher score but after reading some reviews here and doing a little research...