Out of Thin Air

Iceland is a place everyone knows everybody. Back in the 70's there was a population of just 200k so when two men vanished over a space of several months there was massive pressure on the police to find the culprits. Six suspects were arrested and confessed to the murders and Iceland breathed easy again. The trouble is , despite their convictions , the six weren't sure if they were guilty or not. This is a fascinating documentary about how the human mind works if manipulated or mentally tortured. It's very sad in parts because lives were completely ruined but as documentaries go this is well worth watching. It's available on Netflix and BBCi player.

Innocent until pressured into pleading guilty? Or something to that effect ... well something this documentary shines a light on. And it is an interesting premise. Individuals and how it all came to become a story worth making a documentary about. Mistakes during trial do happen everywhere, but this is just a whole different level.

The interviews are good and the structure is neat too. It all works fine with the timeline and with suspension the movie builds up to. If you like real life story drama, then this will be right up your alley. It's not trying to show off too much, so be aware of that

Not one of the best true crime documentaries I've seen. This one could easily have been an hour and feels very padded at an hour and a half. I've never liked reconstructions and they doesn't add anything here either. The story starts out interesting and goes for the psychological angle, which is fine, but as an open-ended case we learn very little by the end about what actually happened.

One of the interviewed officers said that there was no DNA evidence at the scene--in 1975.

First use of DNA in a criminal investigation was in 1986.

This is what you get in this documentary. A lot of faulty memories and unclear statements by everyone. It drags on and on like a slow moving Fellini picture, and ultimately goes nowhere.

The case might be interesting, but this film is not.

I can see how this story is interesting, but I just don't think it was interestingly told. I found it wanted to say much and used up a lot of space and time but in the end it gave me no solid clues why I should think they were guilty or not. I thought it just did a lot of talk over nothing instead of focusing on the story and the details. I also found it a bit one-sided as we were able to almost only see or hear Erla's story.

What I also wanted out of this is to kind of delve into what might have happened to the missing persons, the theories surrounding that and a bit more talk about the 'victims' so that we can maybe make our own theories about what might have happened to them.

I don't know. To me it's really bland - stylistically, the way the story was unraveled, the main character of this story (or who the focus was on)...

Just not my cup of tea. :)