Casting JonBenét
Director: Kitty Green
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 1.5
In this faux-"documentary" about the mysterious (and bizarre) death of lil' beauty pageant queen JonBenét Ramsey, Green hires actors to play the various people involved with the story - including her mother Patsy, her father John and her older brother Burke - with the performers drifting 'in and out of character.' First, I never felt for one moment that any utterance in this wasn't scripted (especially the breast-whipping guy) and second, I'm not sure what Green's trying to accomplish by having what amounts to multiple people reading off sections of Wikipedia pages - you can complain all you want about 'fake news,' but at least the media tried to actually investigate the situation (the police botched it up unmercifully). What this becomes, then, is some attempted 'exposé' piece that doesn't uncover anything new and is about as genuine as the 'confessions' of the (real) Ramseys (which may be the point ... but that's still not helpful).
