Girl in the Picture

Netflix crime documentaries are usually too long, and spread needlessly over multiple episodes. This feature-length doc is too short, and could have done with an extra couple of hours too tell more about the real parents, Michael's possible father, and the little brother "Philip" who was abducted with the three sisters at the beginning, and who (according to Wikipedia) showed up in 2019.

A very good documentary, nonetheless, and one that I will remember for a long time.

This is an utterly awful story and that is what makes it captivating. I didn't think the film itself was anything remarkable and am perplexed at the reviews that mark it out as a different way of presenting a real life tragedy. The film was well done and it did spend time trying to bring things together to give the subject respect and a sense of closure for the family but if I am honest I think that is a mechanism for making the voyeurism of this kind of film palatable.

It was not in and of itself a remarkable bit of film making.

I enjoy documentaries and am fascinated mainly by what motivates these crimes, how we can spot clues to these kind of behaviour etc but I am more than a little concerned that Netflix seems to be becoming known for glamourising this genre, reading reviews of how amazing it was left me wondering if we are so detached from the fact that it is real we are becoming numb to real life horror and are we getting used to dining out on other peoples misery?

The documentary starts off as a typical hit-and-run case, eventually branching out into a spiral of unending twists and hidden mysteries. While it spends the entirety of the first act on the perpetrator and his doings, director Skye Borgman ensures that the piece lends ample time on unraveling the mystery around the titular girl's identity. That's when the documentary comes into its own, never letting us forget that it's not the inhumanity meted out to the victim that she needs to be remembered for, but for who she was, as a person (friend, peer, mother). Skye wants to tell us that even under the most difficult circumstances, the victim was always trying to be her best version. The final stretch is incredibly moving, especially when we get to know of more people related to her, and what she meant (or still means) to each of them.

Who was Michael's father? DNA testing ruled out Warren Hughes. Who was Megan's father? It seems odd if Sharon was never allowed much freedom that she could have had 2 pregnancies by other men.

A young woman dies in an Oklahoma City from the injuries she has received in a hit and run. The doctors and police suspect foul play, but it isn't until they don't find out that she isn't who she says she is that the mystery begins to unfold. Slowly, but surely, the horror of her life unfolds.

This is one of the best, and most well constructed, documentaries, I have ever seen. The director tells the story in the chronology that the police and the FBI a discover it. The result is the stomach churning story of sociopath and the damage he has done.

See it because his victims deserve to have their stories told, but, beware, that is disturbing.