hyped garbage

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Blistering performances.

The story itself, with all its plot twists, rivals a good murder mystery, but I would've enjoyed reading about the case rather than watching the documentary. The technique seemed amateurish to me: long, too-close closeups, blurry shots brought into focus (instead of edited out), pointless scenes where nothing is happening.The rest of my criticism is admittedly unfair, but I'll say it anyway, because it definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the series. I found several of the people involved very hard to watch and listen to: Martha, who spoke in "up talk" (making every sentence sound like a question) and was so vapid; Caitlin with her "vocal fry" (hard to explain; just look it up); Michael, so dripping with self-pity that every time he opened his mouth, I couldn't help but think he was lying, his false bravado, his self-sacrificing-but not really; and the lawyer Rudolf who grinned and hammed for the camera and was overall so glib you'd think he'd forgotten his client's life was on the line.And then there was the scant treatment of family members who didn't defend Peterson, which makes the whole enterprise seem very biased. Why didn't we hear more about Caitlin's research that led her to doubt her dad?People who like documentaries more than I do will probably like this one.

I found this crime documentary very biased, but interesting. Why not go further and put Mr. Peterson to a liar detector to see if is telling us the truth or lie about or why not involve a medium with skills into Occult to see really what happned at the 9 Dec 2001? A lot of things can be done to discover if he really tell us the tryth. I was disappointed to read an bout the female editor of this dicumentary who had a relationeship with Mr. Peterson and she says that the content of this documentary didn't affect the message of it. Hell no, who would believe that! I think in the beginning I did not find Mr. Peterson guilty but the last episodes naild it and find hard to belive that someone can loose so much blood after falling down from stairs. The guy is guilty and he is going to live with that for th rest of his life och even after, I think! Good documentary, very recommended thought!

Regardless of whether you believe Michael Peterson is innocent or guilty of the crime he is accused of, this documentary is extremely well done and appropriately portrays the twisted justice system, how evidence can easily be fabricated or misinterpreted, and how members of the jury and the public, are incapable of "unhearing" things that have been said in the courtroom. The influence of the media - the bias the individual reporters have and the way they choose to relay the information they receive - heavily impacts the way the public view the alleged crime, and in this day in age, people cannot easily escape the media's coverage of such incidents. I found myself on the fence about Peterson's innocence right up until the last couple of episodes. Something Peterson's attorney (David Rudolf) said has resonated with me, and I believe it will for a long time, "Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence". This documentary will forever change the way I view crimes portrayed by the media, and what it means to plead "guilty".

In 1980, a woman in Australia became the centre of a media storm when she claimed that her baby had been taken by a dingo. The Australian public, led by a vicious and frenzied media, agreed amongst themselves that she had killed the baby as part of some obscure religious cult - because the baby was wearing a black dress!There was no evidence, other than a missing baby and an odd-seeming couple. But everyone felt that the mother was cold and didn't display the proper signs of grief.So, based on nothing but assumptions and some very shoddy police work, she was sent to prison. After multiple unsuccessful appeals, in 1986 a crucial piece of evidence was discovered and the mother was released for a new trial. In 1988 she was fully exonerated. In 2012 a coroner finally ruled that the baby had been killed by a dingo. They made a film about it, starring Meryl Streep, but the baby was still dead and her parents had been cruelly tried by the media and imprisoned by an unjust and negligent judicial system.Ring any bells?The story of The Staircase is eerily similar. Based on little more than a localised predisposition to dislike and distrust anyone intellectual, bohemian, bisexual, or even mildly odd, the incompetent, corrupt, and immensely bigoted police department and prosecutors mounted a modern-day witch-hunt against a man who they felt must be guilty of murder, simply by virtue of being closeted and weird (as well as intellectual and bohemian, of course). The moronic, bigoted local media quickly jumped on the bandwagon, bringing with them a moronic and bigoted public.The sheer weight of reasonable doubt should have instantly exonerated the poor man, but the justice system proved, as usual, to be anything but, and the judge proved to be very nearly as useless and incompetent as everyone else involved. (Although he later admitted that this case had likely been a vast miscarriage of justice).The unprecedented access given to the documentary crew throughout the trial makes for an exceptionally in-depth viewer experience. In stark contrast with the standard available material from a murder trial, which is almost entirely provided by a biased and unreliable news media, in this case we get a rare opportunity to follow the story from the inside, with an exceptional close-up view of the accused murderer through every stage of mounting his defence.Having followed his case this closely, I find him innocent of all charges. Unfortunately I am in the minority. Seeing the way he was treated by the so-called judicial system, and how many reviewers of the documentary are still convinced of his guilt - despite a staggering lack of evidence that should at the very least raise "reasonable doubt" - I find myself wondering if we are all still living in 1980's Australia!