So 90's in camera style, detached documentary work, and uncanny subject divulgence due to the still new mass-television-audience medium. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky direct, admittedly for HBO, in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas. The people are trash, obsessed with the idea of satanism, which has seeped into their consciousness with television. 3 boys, Michael Moore, Christopher Byers, and Stephen Branch, in 1993, were brutally killed in, or near the forest. Their deaths and mutilated bodies, were attributed to satanic killings, the parents angry as hell (understandably), but, as it is, too eager to see any justice rather than real justice. Sinofsky and Berlinger have astonishing access. Not only into the families of the deceased, but into the subsequent trials that took place afterwards. Police, eager to place blame, sought out the weirdos in town. These were: mentally retarded Jesse Miskelly, Jr. (forced to confess under duress), 16 year old Jason Baldwin, and the supposed ringleader, Damien Echols. The three were bastardized by the townspeople, and put on trial to no evidence, emotion, and hearsay. Berlinger and Sinofsky have an intent here: to show an injustice, and simultaneously, they craft the picture of an uneducated mass of people as fascinated by satanism as they are ignorant of the power of the camera. The following documentaries by the documentary duo exhibit even more of this truth, and its gradual realization.
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills: ★★★1/2
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