Absolutely the worst movie.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

That's really all there is to it. This film is raw. This film will tear into you. More than just emotional, this film is magnetic. What is it really? A simple film; a simple subject. This movie is put together with simple style. It's mostly interviews and mostly hand-held, and yet somehow it eclipses so many more complex and more expensive movies when it comes to emotion. Like I said, this film is magnetic. It is not a movie that you have to work yourself up to watch. Sit down, press play, and this thing will take you. This is the sort of movie that makes you pay attention to it and once you pay attention to it, there's no escaping its impact. More so than any thriller, this is a movie that you can't look away from. Even if you already know how it will end, this film will affect you. At the end of the day, there must just be something to seeing someone look you in the eye, and pour their heart out. That's what this movie is all about.

Three blood-thirsty child murders have been sent free, thanks to this one-sided propaganda piece. The whole notion that these three were the victims of small-town prejudices is nonsense. These three were not convicted because they wore black, listened to Metallica, or read Stephen King novels. That is patently absurd and is a huge insult to people in small towns. Consider the following things that this documentary conveniently omits:1) Jesse Misskelley did not have just one confession, in which he admitted to murdering those boys. He had a total of FIVE confessions!! Including a confession where his lawyer was present and advised him not to. 2) Damien was not simply a misunderstood outcast. He was certifiably mentally ill and had been in multiple psych wards prior to this incident. He was into animal torture, setting fires, drinking human blood and had talked about his desire to kill his parents. He was prone to hallucinations and often had extremely violent thoughts. One psych ward had labeled him as a psychotic and took precautions so that he wouldn't injure other patients. Incidents at the trial where qualified psychiatric professionals testified to his mental state were omitted from this farce of a documentary.Please, I urge other readers to do further research into this matter. WM3truth.com is a good source to get started.

First of all, the rating should be on the film and not anything specific it contains right so for that reason I give this one the lowest possible because it's a classic case of a bias idiotic perspective they view this case. Documentaries today is about twisting the truth rather than exposing it, the world is upside-down.So I'm 100% sure that these psycho teens committed the crime.Their defense was so apathetic, what teenager wouldn't cry, rage and just panic over the possibility of being convicted for murder if they had nothing to do with it. The one guy, the one with the black shark eyes even smirk, waves and seem a bit proud at times in and around the court room. The retard gave a statement where he confessed the crime and goes into details on what they did. This is the thing the film makers and the conspirators claim to be a false testament meaning that the police either force him to confess or that the police interrogate in such a way that the suspect are manipulated or tricked into confessing the crime. But why would this be even remotely plausible if the police on the tape question again and again about details if they police had planted the statement they wanted the suspect to say.Like "at what time did you come there" -"at 7 or 8", "before you said around 9" - "yea, around 9" , "so which is it, 7 or 8 or 9", "-8 or 9" and it goes on like this. Say that the police had their estimated time frame for the murder at 8. Why would he Not stop asking when he said 8 but instead ask again and again like a honest cop asking to get a straight answer would. No no no! His statement was real. Guilty!You should instead question these film makers and those crazy nuts giving the murderers such support on at best equally unfounded evidence that they were innocent. The women that fall in love with killers is a classic too, do you really believe this broad is the exception?Hell no, these guys planned to kill and killed these children.

Powerful and thought provoking look at American justice, and how we treat those who are outsiders or 'different'. When three very young boys are found brutally murdered, and mutilated the town of West Memphis demands retribution and closure, and so, after some fruitless weeks of police work, the suspects become three teen-age boys, who listened to heavy metal, and the oldest of whom dressed (somewhat) Goth and was interested in Wicca. A strong indictment of how, at least some of the time in our justice system 'guilty until proved innocent' is the rule. That said, the film makes some serious miss-steps by not being clearer about some of the evidence it brings up, but never explores. For example, we're told early on by the filmmakers that all 3 boys had alibis for the night of the killing, yet we never hear about it again. Are their defense lawyers THAT bad, or were the alibis not solid? Two said they were home with their families, yet the families never mention being with them that night. Similarly, we are never told why the police picked up the first of the boys, a borderline mentally retarded kid, who clearly didn't know what was going on, for questioning. The implication was that the cops wanted an easy pliable target, but the issue is never explored either by the defense, or by the film-makers. In a 150 minute movie, there's no need for those kind of loose ends, leaving us to question whether we've seen a fair reporting of what went on, or if there really was more evidence against the kids than we're shown. Still a powerful and important examination of how we often rush to judgment, socially and legally. Recent history has shown this is far from an isolated case - people are sent to prison, even death row on flimsy or incomplete evidence, and by playing on a juries fears far more often then we would all like to believe.