This is a four part show that could easily be 3 or less without the repetition and padding. There are tons of shots of streets and cityscapes and trees and stills and video of Bernardo and Holomoka repeated over and over and over and over. The same things said by the same people and then other people are repeated over and over and over. We have to see people being interview coming in, sitting down. We get a shot of one guy's whiskey glass. Another shot of a guy stopping to take a drink. We get long (unethical) shots of the interviewees holding back tears. We get the people repeating things like "she should have never got that deal" over and over. Yeah, we know, do we need every single person on the show to repeat the obvious?
There's lot of unethical editing. In episode four where they talk about Karla being released from prison, we get long shots of the interviewees looking sad. Some crying. That's it. It's seriously immoral, done simply to evoke emotion by using these people's grief. I hate the people who produced this.
The name of the show implies you're going to be watching the "murder tapes" as well. More immoral stuff about this show. When I saw that title my first thought was "wait, they destroyed the tapes after the trials. What "lost murder tapes" are they referring to? They talk about the tapes in the episode like they do in any other doc about these two. That's it. There's no new light or video we haven't seen here.
We see TONS of the same video you've seen on every other documentary about these two. Over. And over. And over. The same 20 or so shots. And every time someone says "Paul Bernardo" we have to see a still of him or video of him making faces. It's beyond annoying. There came a time when I had to look away every time they did this.
They also do lots of reenactments intertwined with the same video we've seen already and it's edited to imply it's part of the video. For example, she's talking in an interview about how they'd drive around looking for girls - then we see a shot of Paul driving (just a random shot they took, NOT of them looking for girls) intertwined with reenactment shots of young girls walking down the street, implying this IS video of them looking for girls and that's some of the girls they got on video. It's mind bogglingly unethical.
But as I stated, things are repeated ad nauseum throughout the show, stringing out this to four episodes. It would have been a much more solid 3 episode or even 2 episode show.
That said, it's the fourth episode that you get most of the stuff not seen in other documentaries and that's what happened during the trial. This was pretty good. Still a lot of dishonest editing but overall the episode is far and away the best of the four.
One reporter described Karla on the stand as "a beige curtain." Her descriptions were great.
You have Bernardo's lawyer team talking and they think all funny. They laugh and smile throughout. One lady who was a paralegal is is on episode 4 for a lot, talks about how she hates Karla and what a terrible person she is but "we wanted to give Paul everything." She never says anything bad about the guy who orchestrated the whole thing - who besides this was the Scarborough rapists. I hated this lady with a passion, even more than the lawyer.
A lot of the interviews have the camera RIGHT UP AGAINST THE INTERVEES FACE. Why is it so close? Is this a Jonathan Demme film we're watching? Pull the camera out. We don't need to see every pore on the person's face.
Overall, if you're as familiar with this case as I am, you only need to watch the fourth episode. It was good. And you do leave feeling sad for the 3 victims (outside the rape victims who you also feel bad for). I wish this had been produced by better people then ones who did this, though. Could have been better.
