This unusually absorbing and extremely disturbing documentary is about the investigation surrounding the murder of three children at "Robin Hood Hills," which is located in West Memphis, Arkansas. The grizzly murder took place on May 5, 1993, and three teenagers were pinned as the killers: Jessie Miskelly (who has an IQ of 72), Damiem Echols (who dresses in all black and listens to heavy metal music), and his friend Jason Baldwin. The massacre was said to be attributable to some kind of "Satanic ritual" by the local townspeople (which consists mostly of "Fundamentalist-type" Christians). What makes this documentary so absorbing is that the directors had complete freedom to tape the court hearings; hence, the complex, unfolding drama which took shape inside the court is fully recorded and the viewer is gradually drawn into the subtleties of the case. What becomes clear from this documentary is that the evidence marshaled by the prosecuting attorneys is no where near sufficient to warrant the severity of the sentence delivered to the three teens (Miskelly and Baldwin both received life sentences, while Echols received the death sentence). There are lots of holes and unanswered questions which the jurors, perhaps blinded by prejudice concerning alleged Satanic rituals, refused to face. For example, If the massacre took place at Robin Hood Hills, why is it that there is no trace of blood to be found there? How could the teens have done such a thorough clean up job--in the dark, with little water (in the streams), and pestered by mosquitoes in the area? And how come there are no mosquito bites on the three victims? Further developments towards the end of the film throws a completely new and chilling possibility on the whole situation: John Mark Byers, the step-father of one of the massacred children, Christopher (whose penis was severed with a knife), gives a pocket knife to the directors as a gift. They discover that it has traces of blood on it, so they hand it over to the police. A cursory blood test reveals that the blood on the knife is of the same type as Christopher's. Could Byers actually be the killer? He denies it, and none of the townspeople believe it. But...if Mr. Byers' claim that the blood on the knife is his own (his blood type is the same as Christopher's) is correct, how come in an earlier police interrogation he claimed that he didn't cut himself with the knife? And how could the police be so careless as to let the blood from the knife be removed, so that no further testing (e.g. a DNA test) can be done on it? At the end of the film one is left questioning the justice of the legal system, and facing up to the following unnerving possibility: The three children were in fact killed by the three teens in a Satanic ritual of some kind (which is scary indeed), or they were killed by Byers, one of the boy's step-father, and a seemingly well accepted member of the community (which is downright frightening!). See this one and judge for yourself. (cf. Paradise Lost 2: Revelations).
