Crhyme Scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel it has all the ingredients of a great mystery of true crime: a potential missing victim; an infamous locality; a dangerous urban environment; a number of suspects; an avalanche of puzzling details; a viral video that offers far more questions than answers; and a series of coincidences – or are they synchronicities? – which suggests that the business could be the by-product of either a government plot or supernatural phenomena. All you could crave from a genre effort is here, although in the end, the best thing about this four-part Netflix series (premiered on February 10) is its conclusion, which offers a critique of conspiracy theorists – and theories – who for the first time turned her story into a famous cause.
Directed by Joe Berlinger, who is no stranger to the genre – after driving paradise lost the trilogy, as well as that of Netflix Conversations with a killer: Ted Bundy tapes–Crime scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel is about Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old from Vancouver, who disappeared on February 1, 2013, while visiting Los Angeles as part of a vacation on the west coast. At that time, Lam was staying at the Cecil Hotel in the city center, a unit with a large entrance and a hall that had distorted its true shady nature as a refuge for drug users, pimps and murderers. Being a cheap short- and long-term residence for Skid Row residents – among the poorest and most affected crimes in metropolitan areas in America – Cecil has a long, notorious history, including being one of the last residences reported in Black Dahlia , Elizabeth Short, as well as the temporary home of Richard Ramirez, aka Night Stalker, who used to walk through its halls, empty and bloody, on his way after sacrifice, to his room. His nickname was “Hotel Death”.
Cecil’s scandalous past inspired him American Horror Story: Hotel, but Lam probably didn’t know about his reputation. Under the management of manager Amy Price (featured in new interviews), the hotel split in two, creating a second lobby and entrance, dividing three floors and renaming the new “Stay on Main” section as a means of attracting budget-conscious travelers. It was that “separate” hostel that Lam visited in early 2013. After a few days of staying, however, she joined MIA, and the leaflets posted around the city did little to bring promising promises. Through interviews with detectives who worked on the case, as well as dramatic recreations and narratives read from Lam’s extensive Tumblr blog – which she treated as a veritable online journal –Crime scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel sets its puzzling scenario, which initiated a significant LAPD investigation of the hotel, which led to some concrete clues.
Until, that is, the police discovered Lam’s security video camera inside one of Cecil’s elevators and, hoping that ordinary citizens could help decipher his riddles, they posted it online.
What followed was a feeling of good faith on the internet, as the video with the Lam elevator quickly went viral, provoking intense scrutiny and debate and inspiring a legion of “web networks” – such as the kind of amateur detectives who helped at the overthrow of Luka Magnotta, as described in Not F ** k with cats– To try to unravel what was going on in the confusing clip. Over the course of four minutes, the film depicts Lam entering the elevator, pushing several buttons, hiding in the corner, repeatedly sticking his head out to look for (or hire?) An unseen figure, moving his hands. irregularly (as in a trance) and, finally, leaving. Her behavior is bizarre, as is the fact that the elevator doors remain open for an amazingly long period of time and even after they close, then reopen to reveal the same floor that Lam was on – despite the many buttons pressed on its control panel that should have sent it elsewhere.
There is no obvious explanation for this series of events, which is what sparked such wild online speculation and what gives Crime scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel his deceptive hook. Even with a third episode that largely spins its wheels, Berlinger’s docuseries generate suspense from the bewildering nature of his story. Discussions about the dangerous danger of the area and Cecil’s sordid legacy increase the number of possible ways in which Lam could have been victimized. And once her body is found – floating in one of the water tanks on the roof, which had been providing contaminated water to Cecil’s residents for weeks – the question of how she got into this fatal situation remains puzzling. Which, in turn, motivates characters such as John Lordan and John Sobhani to analyze the Lam viral video, examine the autopsy report, and visit Cecil in an attempt to solve the case.
“Discussions about the dangerousness of the area and Cecil’s sordid legacy increase the number of possible ways in which Lam could have been victimized.”
Berlinger surpasses it to some extent with terrifying dramatic recreations, but Crime scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel it benefits from a series of solid talking heads and a central unit that continually proves intriguing, especially as web details begin to make startling discoveries, such as the striking similarities between Lam’s fate and the 2005 horror remake. Dark waterand a government-made test for tuberculosis, which was administered on Skid Row just days after Lam’s disappearance – and was called, “I don’t know, ‘Lam-Elisa.’ The director leans heavily into these startling revelations, while preventing Lam’s writing on Tumblr, which portrays her as an adventurous but troubled young woman who might have been looking for strangers to make friends with and who is battling a bipolar disorder. who had to administer it. with antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs.
In its last installment, Crime scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel she deduces what really happened to Lam and, in doing so, gives a sharp rebuke to the conjecture of the online conspiracy that emerged after the debut of her viral video. A distinct 21St. The mystery of the century, which turned out to be a tragedy about mental illness, is proof that the fantastic online “crushing” (which often amounts to horrific crime-tourism) says much more about the desires and dreams of its practitioners than about nominal subjects – a censorship which, reaching into a fight in 2021 with a scourge of deadly madness QAnon, is too timely.