The thing that I loved most about The Staircase, was watching Michael Peterson, the murder accused, very closely. Analysing him.

He invited a camera crew into his home, and into his trial for murder, following the bizarre death of his wife. I was pretty sure the whole way through that he did it and was then mesmerised by how he managed to look/act ‘normal’ throughout.

I got a similar thrill out of The Jinx  – one of my favourite series ever.

This new ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’ has a similar vibe. Except you don’t need a spoiler alert – it’s fully understood from the start that the husband did it. And the whole series is about watching him – watching how he lies.

Per The New York Times:

The film’s power rests in the British filmmaker Jenny Popplewell’s decision to eschew the traditional form of the televised crime documentary — the datelines, the dramatic narrator and emotional interviews — to construct a narrative entirely out of archival footage.

Shanann’s incessant social media updates, her video confessionals and text messages with her husband form the central material of the film’s narrative. Those elements eventually collide with police body camera footage and polygraph surveillance video of Christopher’s confession. The result is a film that feels eerily intimate but also expansive enough to reflect the distance between the online performance of a happy marriage and the devastating truth of a relationship’s unraveling.

Let’s check out the trailer.

I’m in.

[source:nytimes]