Nightmares in Red, White and Blue
2009
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- American Nightmare is compellingly made, with an odd and disturbing saga at its center. But what would feel in 2015 like a shock to the system is now an above-average addition to a subgenre that’s grown exponentially in the years since.
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Jan 17, 2024 · Stream It Or Skip It: ‘American Nightmare’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About Police Accusing A Woman Of Staging Her Own ‘Gone Girl’-Style Disappearance. By Joel Keller @ joelkeller. Published ...
- 2 min
Equal parts infuriating and suspenseful, American Nightmare is an instructive chronicle of institutional bias making a horrifying crime even worse. Read Critics Reviews. TOP CRITIC. Jan 21,...
- (23)
- January 17, 2024
- Bernadette Higgins, Felicity Morris
- A true-crime series that finds small ways to transcend a familiar setup
- American Nightmare Gallery
- What's the best Netflix true-crime documentary?
- Verdict
By Steve Greene
Updated: Jan 22, 2024 11:42 pm
Posted: Jan 22, 2024 10:31 pm
The central events depicted in American Nightmare took place in the spring of 2015. As the first season of Serial and HBO’s The Jinx urged a renewed interest in true crime (and Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” waited in the wings), an odd news story emerged from northern California. Initial news reports described an incident in the city of Vallejo, where a woman was kidnapped from her home, taken from the bed where she and her boyfriend were sleeping. An American public with a freshly developed taste for unsolved mysteries lapped up the coverage, which drew parallels between the hunt for Denise Huskins and one of the decade’s most popular fictional cases of a missing woman.
Knowing that any retelling of this story will be fraught with questions of a murky truth, series directors Bernadette Higgins and Felicity Morris first put their focus on Aaron Quinn, who went to local law enforcement after – in his words – being woken up by a team of kidnappers and then drugged as Denise was abducted from the home they shared. Aaron is framed in the way true-crime interview narrators so often are: sterile room, alternating camera angles, pregnant pauses while relaying details both horrific and bizarre (the alleged perpetrators disguised themselves in wetsuits, by Aaron’s telling). American Nightmare justifies its three-episode structure (it could have been roughly a 2-hour movie otherwise) by introducing new narrators as the story moves along the timeline.
Sprinkled in throughout are the dramatic reenactments that are standard for headline-grabbing stories like this one. Here, though, Higgins and Morris tone down the junky basic-cable aesthetics of their predecessors: Heavily-filtered, hazy flashbacks are replaced by something more visceral. A narrow, mostly point-of-view window into these recreations satisfyingly locks each chapter into a more personal perspective. An extreme close-up on an eyeball, repeated for effect through one extended stretch, is particularly chilling.
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The latest hit Netflix docuseries finds chilling and effective ways to go beyond the standard true-crime expectations. Yet, even as it ends up at a broader message beyond the unusual circumstances of a single kidnapping case, it’s hard to shake the idea that the overall structure of the show and its “twisty thriller” framing are working against wha...
- Steve Greene
Jan 20, 2024 · American Nightmare Review: The New Age of True Crime Content. By Liz Young. Published Jan 20, 2024. Netflix's latest true crime series, American Nightmare places its focus on the victims...
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Jan 20, 2024 · Netflix’s three-part true crime docuseries explores the abduction of Denise Huskins and how law enforcement and the media branded her “Gone Girl”. By Chris Vognar. January 20, 2024. Denise ...
- 2 min
- Chris Vognar
• 2mo • 2 min read. Netflix’s “American Nightmare” exposes the amazing true circumstances behind Denise Huskins’ kidnapping in a plot straight out of a thriller. The rollercoaster starts when...
Jan 16, 2024 · ‘American Nightmare’ Review: A Crime or a Con on Netflix. A three-part documentary revisits the case of a California couple whose claim of a home invasion and kidnapping was thought by law...
