They Called Him Mostly Harmless

Vances are born unfortunately into chaos they make chaos and leave chaos behind if unfound. This story strip away the myth of connectedness in modern world and introduce the lonely lives that exists in shadows. Retrospectively the sleuths of whom most are falling into the aforesaid shadow realm put up a wholesome collective effort that gives a John doe a name that he himself wanted the world to forget. It's sad yet a mysterious venture of social detective work. A story told well methodically and cleverly. Rather than making a regular true crime doc this sleuthing odyssey is a unique and an inspiring social commentary.

This is what happens when a story can be told in one hour, yet the filmmakers need to fill 90 minutes. The whole background of the Facebook group members and their drama was such obvious filler that it ended up taking away from the finished product. The officer originally investigating the case had it right when he said that he skips the drama part when reading the Facebook tips that were coming in. If only we were so lucky.

Apparently reviews have to be stupidly long now so, much like the documentary, it's necessary for me to add a lot of filler in here in order to make the required length. See how annoying it is?

The only thing that I'm really taking away from this documentary is what a loathsome narcissistic P. O. S. Christie is. She doesn't really seem to care at all about the case, she just wants to be the one to solve it. I know exactly what kind of person she is; she gets off on power, on being in charge. Basically, an entitled Karen. The one comment that defined her, made after she shot her mouth off about 'cracking the case', wasn't anything to do with any kind of regret about making a mistake in identifying the hiker, it was about how the mistake would make her look. What an awful human being. Christie, I hope you're reading this. Do better. Be better.

As "They Called Him Mostly Harmless" (2024 release; 89 min.) opens, it is "July 23, 2018", and someone calls 911 to report they found a dead body on a trail in southwest Florida. No name, no credit card, no photo ID. Who is this person? In a parallel story, we are introduced to Christie, who loves to do some internet sleuthing in these types of missing John or Jane Doe cases... At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from documentarian Patricia Gillespie ("The Fire That Took Her"). Here she reassesses the strange case that is the disappearance of someone nicknamed "Mostly Harmless" on the Appalachian Trail. But in fact, the documentary is just as much about the digital sleuthing communities that are out there to "help" solve unsolved cases like this one. Let me just say that it ain't a pretty picture: petty infighting, name calling, (in)competence, you name, they have it. A reporter from Wired Magazine also gets involved, and the contrast between the reporter and the sleuthing communities couldn't be starker. At just an hour and a half, this documentary clips by in no time.

"They Called Him Mostly Harmless" premiered on HBO several weeks ago, and is also streaming on Max, where I caught it the other night. If you are a fan of true crime documentaries, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

I cannot with these internet sleuths, they are ridiculous, sitting at their computers, harassing real people and only thinly doing good things. Then they try to lay claim to discoveries that they are loosely connected to uncovering. Centering a documentary around these people gives them notoriety that they simply do not deserve. The story itself is interesting if you're willing to weed through the self-centered commentary by the sleuths and focus on the mystery. The ending is pretty good, but mostly goes to show how off kilter many of the tangents the "facebook group" took were, just doing too much.