McAfee: Des virus aux démons

As someone who was previously very tied into and intrigued by the almost bond villan-like history of John McAfee, I was initially very excited to see a first-hand account of his endeavors at a personal level.

Overall, I felt that the actual storytelling and timeline of this documentary left a lot to desire and more questions than answers. A lot of the content focused more or less on the storytellig of the documentarians who followed him rather than making McAfee the focal point of of the story.

The overall structure and format of the documentary also seemed all over the place and seemed to follow a plot line and just pivot to something else. For instance, the ghostwriter who essentially knows his life story first-hand was given only a few minutes of screentime while being a great source for his background and history.

Candidly, I think this documentary would have been more effective as a 4 episode mini-series that spends more time developing and diving into the context of WHO John McAfee actually was on top of more context rather than constant sound bites and clips that don't really provide much context.

The basis for any decent documentary is that statements are checked and verified.

Well, this documentary does none of that. It just tells a story from one side in the hope that you believe it. Or at least to see what sticks to the wall. Because a lot of "facts" are thrown at the viewer that could have easily been checked with some authorities.

Why didn't they contact for instance the authorities of Belize to see what is true. Why wasn't the SEC or even the IRS asked for their opinion?! And since this is VICE - whom makes quite some documentaries on cartels - why didn't they also asked the Sinaloa cartel for their opinion.

What also would have been possible, is to have asked some security software experts to see what could have been true of McAfee's statements. How on earth could McAfee have keystroke software in computers of cartels, the U. S. government or the Belize government.

Is there not a mental illness that makes the patient believe that he is being observed and chased by the government?! So for all we know, McAfee was mentally ill?!

I find the documentary therefore a show of bad journalism. The content is though somewhat entertaining to watch. But I get the impression that is was watching more fiction than fact.

Watch it with some friends. It's absurd, enthralling and hilarious in many parts. If you appreciate debaucherous, self-indulgent narcissists and their follies, I say strap in. Drugs, booze, guns, corruption and the open sea. (They should have asked me to write a tagline for this one)

For those criticizing Netflix's ever-growing catalogue of bloated documentaries/docu-series; I hear you. They've been on a run for a while. Please keep in mind this is a one-off 1:40:00 doc and there are zero lulls within. You won't have to commit to three episodes of meandering fluff with no payoff. This one is a blast.

The majority of this documentary is focused on a Vice reporter and photographer and not on John McAfee. It barely covers his legitimate career in software, the circumstances of the murder in Belize he is suspected of and provides nothing insightful about his death in Spain. It's laughable the amount of interviews they have with the Vice guys. I mean who cares what these two idiots have to say. Do yourself a favor and read his Wikipedia page if you are curious and skip this so called documentary.

This is not one of those documentaries that if you just stick with it, will eventually makes sense or get better.

It's just a bunch of crap footage they quickly patched together without putting in enough effort to make it flow logically. It's hard to believe that the majority of footage used was shot by a professional. It was way too long for the very narrow focus they presented. The snippets of the ghostwriter were interesting, but completely out of place. He probably wasn't too happy to see the end product he contributed to.

The final scene with the girlfriend was just insulting to the audience. Then again, for those of us dumb enough to sit through the entire thing we probably deserved it.

Done correctly, this could've been an interesting and entertaining documentary.