“Why Did You Kill Me?” tells the story of a horrible and arbitrary killing: the demise of a younger girl named Crystal Theobald in Riverside, California, who was shot when a member of a neighborhood gang opened fireplace on her automotive. Theobald had no connection in anyway to her killer, and certainly the homicide appeared so random that investigators didn’t initially know learn how to proceed with the case.
Theobald’s demise was tragic. But the circumstances weren’t precisely sensational, and even significantly distinctive — a fairly meager foundation, in different phrases, for a function size true crime documentary, the place the compelling particulars of a case are its complete enchantment. “Why Did You Kill Me?” (streaming on Netflix) seizes on the one intriguing wrinkle to be discovered: the efforts of Belinda Lane, Crystal’s mom, to unravel the homicide herself, by making a pretend profile on the social media web site Myspace and befriending doable suspects.
The director, Fredrick Munk, dramatizes Belinda’s true-crime catfishing by displaying us Myspace from the desktop-POV type of movies like the thriller “Searching” and the horror movie “Unfriended.” But these digital recreations, in addition to Munk’s use of handcrafted miniatures and a pulsing digital rating that takes cues from Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” really feel like useless makes an attempt to invigorate limp materials.
Munk avoids grappling with something critical or troublesome — as an example, the socio-economic elements that produce these sorts of killings within the first place. Instead, the film fixates on the case’s one novelty, its tangential connection to an outdated social media web site. Just as a result of against the law is true doesn’t imply it’s fascinating. And as “Why Did You Kill Me?” makes clear, with out substance, a touch of fashion received’t do.
Why Did You Kill Me?
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
