Tales Of The Grim Sleeper

Year: 2014

Grade: B+

Country: USA, UK

Director: Broomfield

Review

documentary from nick broomfield about the grim sleeper who killed 12 people. for some reason, though, broomfield keeps mentioning the 180 women whose pictures he had. i don’t know the point of this. the implication is that some of these could be additional victims, but the movie never follows up on any real numbers here. broomfield is really good at finding crazy people on the street who are willing to tell him fantastical stories about whatever topic he’s looking into…tupac/biggie, kurt/courtney, heidi fleiss, etc. he’s not the most discerning filmmaker, but i think that keeps things interesting. once you go down the broomfield rabbit hole you never know where you’re going to end up.

beyond the murders, this is a documentary about poor black people being less than. not good enough to miss and so these 12 people being murdered didn’t really get investigated. a miscarriage of justice, but the reality is that people just don’t care about prostitutes and when they’re black and poor prostitutes then they mean even less. a fascinating portion of the film is when an ex-crack head prostitute drives around with broomfield showing him where she would hang out and asking other prostitutes if they knew the grim sleeper. she’s a colorful character who has certainly seen the dark side of humanity. because broomfield doesn’t get any investigators or experts to weigh in, as most documentaries would have done, we’re left with people like this and lots of speculation. in this case it’s actually more entertaining and potentially haunting that way.