Jason Garnier

From ghosts and murder to curses and global cover-ups, there are a lot of very strange side theories around the Elisa Lam story, and this documentary digs very deep into most of them. The viewer is presented many of these conspiracies as if they are real possibilities. This documentary uses the POV of "web sleuths" as a tool to help tell the story. The story is in essence, about these web sleuths. They seemed to perpetuate a lot of the false information and zany theories that circulated online and sadly sometimes repeated on mainstream media. The premise of documentary seems fine; allow the viewer to think there is a fantastic story surrounding Elisa Lam's death. There are a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the case, many which have easy answers or the information is simply untrue. The documentary doesn't try very hard to remedy any of this. Finally in Part Four we come to a conclusion that even most of the web sleuths seem to agree with. But it's not satisfying at all. You still have the strong sticky taste of conspiracies in your mouth. The documentary does get to the meat of the case, but since it's a story that can basicilly be told in 20 minutes, they wrapped it up in a lots of nonsense and made 4 parts. If you can appreciate the documentary as a story about how horribly wrong web sleuths can be, you will enjoy this documentary. The way some of the sleuths would focus on suspects and completely irrelevant "clues" made me fear that I could be someday be accused of a heinous crime because my initials are the same as a brand of cereal seen in a crime scene photo. It's unsettling how they can be both very confident and very wrong. If you are familiar with the Lam case and are looking for a reasoned approach, this is not the documentary for you. This documentary leaves no silly stone unturned. For me it failed as an investigation and a documentary. If you want a crime doc with a satisfying ending try "West of Memphis" or if you want competent web sleuths try "Don't F With Cats", both worlds better than "The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel"