What I love about this documentary was how it subverted your expectations right from the get-go. The first few minutes of this documentary is a trailer making you want to dive into what’s going on, but also making you assume things that actually aren’t true. It’s a brilliant way of doing storytelling that has you hooked in the first few minutes and makes you want to watch just to find out what really happened.

The Murdaugh family are a big family of district attorneys in South Carolina, due to this they are known as the big bosses who seem to be able to get away with anything because they have all this power and corruption within them. But one fateful night the family’s dynasty changes forever.

The youngest brother Paul takes his friends on his boat one evening after they’ve all been drinking, this decision causes a crash and results in the death of one of the girls in the group, Mallory. It immediately seems like the Murdaugh family are trying to cover up what happened and blame another one of the kids for the crash saying that they were driving the boat and Paul was not. However it is found out that Paul is the reason for the death of Mallory and is charged with 3 felonies.

We then cut forward to a shocking 911 call where the father of the Murdaugh family, Alex, states he has found his wife and his son Paul dead via shooting. However things are escalated in this scenario when it becomes clear that there are more deaths that surround the Murdaugh family, and their reign of terror may have lasted much longer than we first realised.

What I found fascinating about this case and this documentary being my first understanding of it was that at the start you believe that Paul continues a murderous rampage after killing Mallory, that’s how this whole thing is set up and makes you believe that he killed her accidentally but then something snapped and he continued to kill. But to find out that he was one of the victims is such a change to the storyline that I did not expect, it really keeps you intrigued to understand what was really going on and how this all happened in the first place.

I think it’s an absolutely fascinating documentary that dives into a case that I didn’t have any knowledge on before and I have continued to follow throughout the trial of Alex, the father, into what really happened with all these people. It shows that when you’re a person in power sometimes you have to do the most heinous things to keep you there and and not even your own family are safe.

This documentary, thanks to the opening, hooked me from the very first moment and kept me watching all the way through. I believe other documentaries could take some learnings from this in how to entice your audience, because the second that happened I knew I wouldn’t stop watching this documentary until I finished it, and I watched it all in one day. It’s a fantastic way to make sure that your audience doesn’t drop off, and I know before when Netflix documentaries have left the twist or the shocking surprise to the end of the first episode I’ve hardly even got there because it was so boring. Having it this way around meant that regardless of any lulls in the show I kept watching because I had to find out exactly what happened.

What do you think of the Murdaugh case?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

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