Ellen Jessica

This ultimate purpose of a documentary film featuring Elisa’s case is to raise awareness for mental health disorders and the triggering behaviours, and also increase the public’s perspective on how to respond to individuals in need. This 4 hour long film however, did a horrible job featuring meaningful parts. The police, and forensic scientist, internet theorists, and especially the hotel manager’s input and dialogue was a waste of time and not useful or helpful at all but to expose the negligence, uselessness and lack of professionalism. The police failed to communicate the MOST important piece of evidence from the piping technician: the water tank lid was open when found. The forensic scientist has illegible or scribbled handwriting that could have been more professional in quality to avoid misinterpretation. (This is a professional report! Why was the handwriting so rushed? I get marked in university for lab neatness, so how is this excusable?) The internet theorists did not contribute in any productive or informative way to help solving this case. In fact they did the opposite by spreading confusing, non-factual based theories and conspiracies that derailed the investigation. So why were they given screen time? The hotel manager’s entire narrative is that: this is a bad neighborhood, it is skid row. Bad things and sketchy people hangout here all the time, and I did everything I could that was under my “job description” to ensure the safety of my hotel guests. When in reality, the safety of this hotel was handled poorly despite efforts were made to improve its traffic and brand. She continued to reinforce that she and the hotel are not responsible for the lack of security measures (lack of security staff, cameras at potential risk locations e.g. the roof, the tank, etc.). In this case, if not the hotel’s responsibility, the who’s? This is a documentation of a young girl’s suffering with mental illness and how it eventually led to her death. This is also an exposé of how things can be incredibly inefficient due to negligence, carelessness, and a lack of responsibility and attention to detail. This is a wake up call that if people took their damn jobs more seriously, they could have found Elisa’s body sooner. What a terrible film. The writer, producer and director should be ashamed and apologize for the disrespect for Elisa Lam, exploiting her death as a reason to juice a murder mystery out of a tragic accident for money.