Netflix's American Murder: The Family Next Door recounts the Watts family murder as more than a crime story

The New York Times

The Netflix documentary authorized by the Wtts family "takes a less sensational approach" than other true-crime documentaries, "providing something more haunting and searching about the story," says Bilal Qureshi. "The film’s power rests in the British filmmaker Jenny Popplewell’s decision to eschew the traditional form of the televised crime documentary — the datelines, the dramatic narrator and emotional interviews — to construct a narrative entirely out of archival footage," says Qureshi. "Shanann’s incessant social media updates, her video confessionals and text messages with her husband form the central material of the film’s narrative. Those elements eventually collide with police body camera footage and polygraph surveillance video of Christopher’s confession. The result is a film that feels eerily intimate but also expansive enough to reflect the distance between the online performance of a happy marriage and the devastating truth of a relationship’s unraveling. I’ve struggled with this genre of storytelling and whether the voyeuristic attraction of such gruesome tragedy justifies the watching. But Popplewell’s film presents the Watts story as more than a crime story. It is a thematic film about marriage and the deception of social media, as well as a piercing examination of domestic violence constructed with care and undeniable craft."

ALSO:

• American Murder: The Family Next Door forces viewers to question their perceptions
• The documentary exposes the lies of our online lives
• Director Jenny Popplewell made the decision to have Shanann Watts guide the narrative: “I went straight to Shanann's Facebook page, and she's still alive on there and feels like everybody else, you know?” says Popplewell. “That just stuck with me. I decided that rather than our film telling people what to think, we could just show them.”