American Murder: The Family Next Door

One of Netflix's most discussed documentaries, and it got there through what it refuses to do: no narrator, no reconstructions, no experts telling you how to feel. The subject is the Watts murders of 2018 in Frederick, Colorado. Chris Watts killed his pregnant wife Shanann and their two small daughters. Jenny Popplewell built the whole film from primary sources: Shanann's own Facebook videos and posts, the couple's text messages, police body-camera footage, neighbours' doorbell recordings, and the interrogation tapes in which Watts is walked step by step into the truth. The effect is that the film does not steer you. It shows you the life Shanann narrated herself and leaves the gap between how it was presented and what was happening inside it for the viewer to close. The marriage that looked happy on social media is part of the same file. It went up in September 2020. Before you watch, know this: it involves the murder of children, and because it moves through real recordings it makes distance hard to keep. There is also a real question in turning a victim's own footage into viewing material, and the documentary never puts that question to itself.