The Carmen Family Deaths has to do with a boy with autism and killings and family conflicts and inherited wealth oh my! It's sort of an enigma wrapped inside a riddle which is wrapped inside a poser, with main, mythical antagonist Nathan Carman appearing like a rather neutered, Keyser Soze squib. "The lack of things that were done raised questions." Are you sure about that boss? Are ya really?
Anyway The Carmen Family Deaths is directed by Yon Montskin, a feature rookie who knows how to haunt his audience through overhead shots, archives, grainy interviews, ominous music, and effective, headlong editing. His film is a docu yet plays out like a Dateline episode with tons of panache. Josh Mankiewicz isn't hosting, Lester Holt isn't leading, this isn't TV swipe and well, that just makes it more efficacious, more Dateline-ish on the Netflix tip.
So OK, what is "Family Deaths" about? Well it has to do with a wealthy New England kid (Nathan Carman mentioned earlier) who just happens to be the prime murder suspect in the disappearance of his mom and the brutal shooting of his real estate developer grandfather. Now did Nate do these heinous crimes? And why is his fam so house divided? And um, why is he so darn stoic? Uh, we'll never know because Carman eventually offed himself in prison, awaiting his forlorn trial.
The Carmen Family Deaths, yeah it comes off like pure fiction, shot so cleanly with such an unsullied print that every scene almost feels like a reenactment and/or something English helmer Paul Greengrass would have done back in the mid-2000s. As a documentary it's reality legal show smoke with a silver screen oddity. As a film of factual prose and bedeviled plotting it comes on like gangbusters in the Greek tragedy department. ""Deaths gripped".
Written by Jesse Burleson
