Visually the film is simple and meditative, the California b-roll, which may be location scouting footage, is mostly static, the only movement being slow pans and zooms, it's effective to a point but certainly strains attention at feature length. The big issue isn't that the film is experimental in form and content but just that that content, the point of it all, isn't particularly complex. Shackleton criticizes True Crime filmmaking troupes and practices and in the same breath how he couldn't wait to deploy them. He talks about the explosion of True Crime's popularity with a certain amount of distain but is clearly an avid watcher. He expresses frustration about not getting to make his project simply because it would have been watched by a lot of people.
Ultimately the film, Shackleton, has no real insight to offer- he tried to make a film, couldn't, and made this as a substitute- that's it. He feints at broader analysis of True Crime both as a product and the culture's fascination with it but never follows through. However, the way he breaks down imagery and discusses the lexicon of film in conveying information is engaging, the film he describes sounds like the kind of HBO or Netflix project that people would watch, there's a certain appeal to the simplicity and cleanness of the images, but taken together it's all a bit underbaked.
Interesting as an experiment but ultimately incomplete, feels like what it is- the scraps from a bigger, fuller idea.
Currently in theaters.
Stream It.
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