Memorias de un asesino: Las cintas de Nilsen

Netflix has been doing a pretty solid job at serial-killer documentaries and this one falls under the 'fairly okay' category. The core story of Dennis Nilsen's crimes is interesting with some unpredictable layers, however, the recalling style lacks a finite flow. The deeper you get into Nilsen's life journey, the less engrossing it gets. What intrigues is the manner in which he's caught, the articulate person that he is on the tapes, and also some of the survivors' accounts. The homosexual angle is given somewhat less footing here but it's also carefully and respectfully put across. I would have also loved to see more interviews with people who worked alongside Nilsen to get a better insight of how he was publicly perceived. It may also have shed additional light on how he was able to keep his cover for such a long time. At 1h 24m, this one's relatively short and crisp. What astonishes me is that we still don't know the identities of half of his victims.

A wonderfully well made documentary! I especially like the fact they had real news footage AS WELL AS real tape interviews and survivors. I've never heard of this case (like a lot actually) but I'd recommend this one to anyone interested in true crime.

Could draw a parallel to Nick Broomfield's Tales From The Grim Sleeper, from the perspective that the bodies were allowed to accumulate because the target victims were from a marginalised group within society. In the former, the victims having been prostitutes, and in the latter being young gay men in 1980s Britain. You tend to think of policing as based on science and with the highest levels of professionalism applied, however this is pretty far from the truth. Both biases and discrimination playing a major role in outcomes. Maybe the biggest divide of them all is class inequality and how that affects victims and perpetrators. Its fairly well made but I felt it could have been longer and gone more in depth in to the psychology of Nilsen. More often than not documentaries tend to avoid doing this, as I guess looking deep in to the mind of a mass murderer isn't essentially positive for the greater public good. There seems to be a lot of audio and writing from him though, and i did feel in the end that aspect of the doc was cut short in this instance, as he seemed to have an awful lot to say for a serial killer.

I don't understand the poor reviews. I really enjoyed it, if you are a fan of serial killer things you'll enjoy that it's done in a quite unique way. It had a great insight into the murderer and his victims. Especially because of the audio recordings. Beautifully shot in a way that took to back to the bleak early 80's London era. Unless they still live in houses furnished like that still, a lot of work has gone into it that's usually missing in documentaries. It's usually very hard to fill the time with compelling footage when there is none available,

I especially liked that it was something I didn't even know happened. Very clever and thorough.

A very revealing, well made and interesting documentary about one of Britain's worst ever killers, Nilsen. It's so unusual, it's crazy to think that much of what's being said is from the voice of the man himself, it's chilling.

It's well made, and well put together, fortunately it's a little less heavily produced than some of the documentaries on Netflix, it flows pretty well.

I was keen to learn more about him, particularly after the David Tennant series, and this does the job, it's very interesting.

A good watch, 7/10.