For my documentary review, I chose the first installment of the Netflix docu-series “Inside the Criminal Mind”, titled “Serial Killers.” As I started to look for documentaries to watch, this one jumped out at me because it had Jeffrey Dahmer in the cover, who I have been interested in forever. I was not deceived by the cover and title; The documentary is about what exactly causes a serial killer to become a serial killer, and how they go about committing the acts that they do. With the help of the lives of notorious serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, this documentary is all you can hope for when it comes to this specific type of film.

           

           Overall, I would say that what they did well, they did very well, and vice versa. The strongest part for me was that most of the story, (besides the narrator,) is told by psychologists and neurologists from the FBI, and they added an enormous amount to my enjoyment. They gave me a lot to think about. From what they were saying, I  learned more about the ever relevant “nature vs. nurture” argument, and how, when it comes to the case of serial killers, it is definitely a mix of both. They talked about how the area in the brain that causes normal people to feel remorse and empathy is shrunken 18% in many serial killers’ minds, and this combined with just the right kind of awful upbringing just might be enough to turn a person into a serial killer. I also liked how they backed up this point with the experiences with actual serial killers.  However, what I didn’t enjoy as much was the segment where, as they described the process of a serial killer, they showed a reenactment of what the narrator was describing. It is unfortunate that I disliked it because it made up a decent amount of the film. Not only did the whole idea of it not appeal to me, but the acting was not my favorite, and the intense action music behind these scenes made it even more artificial and underwhelming.

       

           Finally, I definitely would recommend this film to a friend, but only a certain type of friend. While it was not a problem for me, there was a huge amount of gory imagery and audio, which can obviously be expected with such a film. However, this can be a problem for a lot of people so it is not for everyone. In addition, as I stated earlier, the reenactments are arguably even harder to stomach than the gory details, and they could possibly be enough of a turn off for some people. However, I truly believe if you can get past that stuff, there is an ample amount of entertainment and knowledge to take away from it that it makes it worth it. Although I have already done a decent amount of research on the topic for school, I walked away from this knowing a lot more about the topic, which, to my understanding, means the documentary did its job.