when a suspect gets more attention than a murder victim
something feels amiss i think amanda knox is one of those names that's known
by pretty much everybody but i like a lot of people
didn't really know the backstory and really felt quite ashamed about that
because it's quite a monumental case so i'm going to be talking about the
documentary on netflix called amanda knox but
i was going to say there'll be spoilers in this it's very hard to say that there
are spoilers and something that is a true kind
to true crime documentary but if you have no idea about the amanda
knox case maybe sit with like a wikipedia article
or a more reliable source as you watch this documentary because
it's not perfect there are bits of it that are very
choppy and i had to go and google things afterwards or in fact while i was
watching it to get clarification on a few things but
if you're already familiar with the case and
those involved then i'm sure you'll be able to follow it
so it's directed by rod blackhurst and brian mcginn
and what's very surprising with this first of all
is that we get to hear firsthand from amanda knox herself
if you don't know the story basically she was accused and arrested in italy
for the murder of a british girl meredith kircher
and i had never heard the name meredith kircher
i had heard of amanda knox so the fact that the victim
her name is not uttered on a lot of people's lips is a massive shame
but such is the nature of the beast usually people are more interested in
the suspects than the victims and she was accused of
this murder and she and her boyfriend and she was
imprisoned in an italian prison for three years i believe but what
really confuses me and i'll talk about this as i kind of talk through the
documentary is that they found the actual culprit
two years before her release and she was still
imprisoned for that length of time and i do not understand
is the italian justice system one of the worst in the world or is there something
underlying that we're not being told exactly it's
it's very very confusing so as i said we hear first
hand from amanda knox herself and also her boyfriend rafael who was also a
suspect and she was i think she was doing a year
abroad or something she was sharing the house with a few people
including meredith kercher who was a british student
amanda knox is or was a 20 year old american student in italy
and i must say we have some gorgeous picturesque images of italy
in in this um program it's very beautiful
we also hear a lot from the italian prosecutors and detectives involved in
the case and basically to cut a very confusing
story short amanda arrives home one day notices some weird things in the house
the doors open there are a few specks of blood in the sink but she decides to go
in the shower anyway and only once she's out of the shower
and notices a bigger blood splat on the mat does she think actually
something could be wrong and then realizes that she can't get into her
roommate's room and she gets her boyfriend they call the
police and eventually she's arrested on
suspicion of this murder and there are some reconstructions there
are also some actual footage from the crime which
always makes these stories so much more tantalizing and interesting i love
seeing body cam footage i watched another documentary after this
that also uses that i will talk about that one
in another video but this is just so frustrating as a documentary because i
was watching it thinking well of course she hasn't got anything to do
with this she was at her boyfriend's house she has an alibi why would she
murder her roommate and then of course we find out that she spent a
long time before she actually saw her realize that there was anything wrong
and it just it doesn't add up and then as a doc the document is about
an hour and a half it packs a lot in here and then all of a
sudden the documentary is like all right she's been arrested etc
and then all of a sudden it's like oh and then we have this suspect who's
currently fled the country he's i believe he was
in germany or something and they talked to him and he says that
she had nothing to do with it and eventually he's
captured and arrested and yet amanda knox remains in prison for
several years and i don't understand that if fair
enough she was arrested in the first case
because they thought it was her fine i get that people are wrongfully
imprisoned but once that's realized they're usually released
at least with an apology if not some kind of pay packet for compensation
so i'm very frustrated by that i can't imagine how amanda knox felt
however the problem is with this is how how do i feel towards amanda knox i
actually did not like her as a person like watching her
home videos from the time and the way she reacted and
responded and even the way she talked in the interview clips i just there was
something about her personality that i did not like that's not to say i
thought she was a murderer but it's hard for me to feel sorry for
her and think oh you know that's a shame you were in prison for longer you were
falsely accused obviously that's awful but it's hard to
feel sorry when there's just something about
her that does not gel and actually i gave it a google and i'm
not the only person who thinks that the documentary itself for the most part
certainly very interesting it's visually it's good there are a lot of as
i said footage um recons things like that there's a very
odd moment where they use i think it was like um
some asian news site created a reconstruction of the murder using sims
characters it's very disturbing that's probably the most
disturbing thing in this but just the narrative development the
way they still told the story and then just suddenly this
other suspect being mentioned it just i don't know from that point from about
the halfway point it became a very poorly told narrative
the construction of the documentary stopped being good after about half an
hour 45 minutes but visually it's an interesting one to
look at and i would recommend it if you know
nothing about amanda knox or meredith curtis or anything about
this case then
as i said yeah it's probably best to sit with
any source in front of you but give it a go it's on netflix
if you like true crime um there are some subtitles because obviously some of the
detectives are speaking italian um yeah it's definitely worth it i
wouldn't say it's stomach curdling it's not the most brutal and
hard to watch true crime documentary that i've ever seen
it's quite tame in that respect but it is interesting i wish
wish meredith meredith that's a mouthful i wish
meredith kircher got more attention in this because really
she's not mentioned that much and obviously that's a bit confusing
and we don't really get told anything about her or her backstory or her time
in italy it's all about amanda knox so i think
they missed a trick there with going into some of the backstory of kircher
who she was hanging around with what she was doing
that could have led somebody to um you know obviously awfully murder her
so the documentary did not take every box
but if you're looking for a true true crime documentary
yeah i'd say it's worth the time