Nightmares in Red, White and Blue
2009
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senscritique.com
- 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 · Comments. 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....
- 2 min
- 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.
Tiger King
Making a Murderer
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The Keepers
Amanda Knox
Other -- let us know in the comments.
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 · January 20, 2024. Denise Huskins in 'American Nightmare.' Netflix. Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but there’s a true crime docuseries on Netflix that has tongues wagging.
- 2 min
- Chris Vognar
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,...
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- January 17, 2024
- Bernadette Higgins, Felicity Morris
Jan 20, 2024 · 1. Studio. Netflix. Pros. American Nightmare expertly lays out all the evidence to tell a full story. The editing and archival footage is expertly edited for emotional effect. The series' focus...
- Trainer
7.5 /10. 18K. YOUR RATING. Rate. POPULARITY. 917. 17. Play trailer 2:03. 10 5. 2 Videos. 13 Photos. Documentary Crime Mystery. After a harrowing home invasion and kidnapping in 2015, a couple is accused of staging the ordeal when the woman reappears in this true-crime docuseries. Stars. Denise Huskins. Aaron Quinn. Henry Lee.
Jan 23, 2024 · by Steve Greene. Posted Jan. 23, 2024, 12:12 p.m. 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...
