![]() and Jason Baldwin stood accused of murdering three young boys the prior summer. The unforgettable Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. When filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky arrived in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1994 to cover the murder trials of three teenagers, they had no idea what they were in for. Even the more problematic documentaries about the WM3 are preferable to it. But Devil’s Knot botches it very, very badly. It has everything the Oscars love: incredible tragedy, outrageous injustice, and an ending note of inspirational triumph. ![]() In fact, the story of the West Memphis Three is so ripe for Hollywood exploitation that it’s honestly surprising that it’s taken this long for it to happen. And West of Memphis struck at just the right time, just as new developments in the case brought it back into the national spotlight.īut that doesn’t mean that a good adaptation of this story couldn’t have been made. The movies of the Paradise Lost trilogy are among the best-known, most important documentaries of modern times. The case of the West Memphis Three has been turned into not one but four docs, and they are anything but low-profile. And it’s not a case like, say, that time a fiction film and a documentary about the Jack Abramoff scandal came out in the same year. From the moment that the production of Devil’s Knot was announced, film lovers the world over noted that it was covering material that had already gone well-trodden by documentaries. In this entry, we recommend that you watch Paradise Lost and West of Memphis. ![]() The Doc Option is a column recommending nonfiction works as alternatives to popular dramatic takes on the same or similar stories.
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