Documentaries like this are interesting because they always cause a battle between your head and your heart, yes this boy killed a person but the person he killed was his abuser and kidnapper, so where do you really stand?

Anthony was a young boy who lived with his father who one day, in a moment of fear, decides to shoot his dad and kill him. Immediately after this he calls 911 and is arrested. The issue we have throughout this case is that Anthony talks of abuse from his father yet at the moment of him killing the man there were no signs of abuse on his body, and it is known that more than one shot was fired from the gun that was used to kill his father, so it seems it was more of an emotional attack than a self defence one.

However things change when it turns out that Anthony was actually kidnapped by his father from his mother and was controlled to ridiculous feats to make sure that Anthony would keep in line with him. It is known that his mother was abused by his father for many years and Anthony was homeschooled by his father because he didn’t want him going out and telling people what was really happening. It seems that he thought the only way out was to kill his dad however in the justice system that’s not okay, and it really blurs the line between whether Anthony is a murderer or not.

Personally I see it as manslaughter because I don’t think Anthony should be tried for murder due to the fact that he was being controlled and abused so harshly by a man that was meant to love him. You can see that Anthony saw no other way out, he knew the only way that he could get away from his dad was killing him and it’s horrific to have to put yourself in that situation and think that’s your only way out, otherwise it’s never going to end. Of course I believe Anthony does deserve to be punished, you can’t just go on thinking that to get out of a bad situation you just kill the other person and that’s okay because it’s not, but at the same time I think there’s so much depth to his dad being an abuser that if you were put in that situation you would probably do the same too.

It’s a really interesting documentary that I nearly gave up with in the first half of the first episode because it was so slow. Watching it for the first half you think, okay he’s killed his dad, he’s a murderer, case closed and they leave until the last minute of the first episode to talk about how his father was also his kidnapper. If they had led with that instead of leaving it until the last moment then people may have been more invested. I understand it’s a tactic to make you want to continue to watch to episode two and then ultimately episode three because you’re already so invested, but for me, I nearly gave up because I just didn’t care. There didn’t seem to be a lot of depth in the story, it was a cut and dry, a kid killed his Dad and that’s it. So if they led with the kidnapping or the abuse then maybe I would’ve been more invested. So while I’m glad I watched it, in some ways I do feel I could’ve fallen off early, because it was quite underwhelming to start.

However if you enjoy true crime shows and if you enjoy looking at the law and the morals and the grey areas of it all then this is a really interesting documentary. It definitely shows you a different side of the law where, yes a man is now dead, but is the person who shot him really a murderer? It causes you to have a battle within yourself of what you would do if you were part of the jury and how you would come to terms with knowing that, yes this boy is a murderer, but is he really going to do it again when the situation that he was in to cause him to kill was so extreme?

What do you think I Just Killed My Dad?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding