''West of Memphis'' is a 2012 New Zealand-American
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
directed and co-written by
Amy J. Berg
Amy J. Berg is an American filmmaker. Her 2006 documentary '' Deliver Us from Evil'' (2006), about sex abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church, was nominated for an Academy Award and won Berg the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documenta ...
, produced by
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy (2001–2003) and the ''Hobbit'' trilogy ( ...
and
Damien Echols
Damien Wayne Echols (born Michael Wayne Hutchison; December 11, 1974) is an American writer, best known as one of the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers convicted of a triple murder. Upon his release from death row in 2011 under an Alford p ...
, and released in the US by
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produc ...
to critical acclaim. It received a nomination for
Best Documentary Screenplay from the
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers:
* The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO
* The Writers Guil ...
.
Background
As with the
''Paradise Lost'' film and its two
sequel
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...
s, ''West of Memphis'' follows the events of the
West Memphis Three
The West Memphis Three are three men convicted as teenagers in 1994 of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, United States. Damien Echols was sentenced to death, Jessie Misskelley Jr. to life imprisonment plus two 20-year ...
, a case in which three teenagers (Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin) were arrested for the murders of three 8-year-old children.
The West Memphis Three were subsequently convicted of murder and remained in prison for more than 18 years. ''West of Memphis'' focuses on Terry Hobbs, stepfather of Stevie Branch, one of the victims of the 1993 crime, as a potential suspect due to physical evidence linking him to the crime, a history of violent behavior and his lack of an alibi for the time the murders were committed, as well as damaging statements made by his ex-wife, former neighbors, and most recently his own nephew, who claims Hobbs confessed to him. The film reveals that inexplicably Terry Hobbs was not interviewed by police at the time of the murders.
Since the 1996 release of the
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
Joe Berlinger (born October 30, 1961) and Bruce Sinofsky (March 31, 1956 – February 21, 2015) were a team of American documentary filmmakers that have won cult fame and critical acclaim. The duo are probably best known for their trilogy of '' ...
documentary, ''
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills'', supporters protested the innocence of the West Memphis Three. Much like the
''Paradise Lost'' films, ''West of Memphis'' chronicles the history of the imprisoned men all the way up to the eventual release through interviews conducted with lawyers, judges, journalists, family members, witnesses, and the West Memphis Three themselves. With the January 2012 HBO premiere of the third ''Paradise Lost'' film, ''
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory'', there were two documentary films on the subject within a year.
''West of Memphis'' premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on January 21, 2012, at the
Deauville American Film Festival
The Deauville American Film Festival (french: Festival du cinéma américain de Deauville, link=no) is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, which has taken place since 1975 in Deauville, France.
It was established by Lionel Cho ...
on September 2, 2012, and at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...
on September 8, 2012.
Critical reception
Writing in ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', film critic
Joe Morgenstern
Joe Morgenstern (born October 3, 1932) is an American writer and retired film critic. He wrote for ''Newsweek'' from 1965 to 1983, and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' from 1995 to 2022. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005. Morgen ...
described ''West of Memphis'' as "a devastating account of police incompetence, civic hysteria and prosecutorial behavior that was totally at odds with a vastly persuasive body of evidence uncovered in a privately funded investigation". Director Amy Berg, wrote Morgenstern, "has a dramatist's eye for what was irretrievably lost — the innocent lives of the children, plus 18 years of three other innocent lives. And she saw, equally well, what was there to be gained: dramatic new insights into an inexorable progression from random arrests through groundless supposition, fevered conjecture and flagrant
perjury
Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...
to official disgrace in a supposedly airtight case."
Film critic
Philip French
Philip Neville French Order of the British Empire, OBE (28 August 1933 – 27 October 2015) was an English film critic and radio producer. French began his career in journalism in the late 1950s, before eventually becoming a BBC Radio prod ...
of ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' called ''West of Memphis'' "riveting", and a "shocking indictment of the American criminal justice system and a tribute to the dedication of selfless civil rights lawyers and their supporters from all over the world".
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for ''Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...
of ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' gave the film an "A−" and wrote that it "casts a hypnotic spell all its own. It artfully sketches out the events for anyone who's coming in cold, but basically, its strategy is to take what we already know and go deeper. ... ''West of Memphis'' goes after ''another'' possible suspect, Terry Hobbs, who was stepfather to one of the victims and who has denied any involvement. In doing so, the film reframes the story's terrible darkness, even if it can't give us the closure we hunger for."
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' gave the film a perfect four star rating, writing: "Do we need a fourth film? Yes, I think we do. If you only see one of them, this is the one to choose, because it has the benefit of hindsight."
See also
* ''
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills'', the original 1996 film on the trial of the West Memphis Three
* ''
Paradise Lost 2: Revelations'', which follows up on the appeals and post-trial controversy
* ''
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory'', which was supposed to follow the West Memphis Three as they remained in prison, but was changed to their release after the West Memphis Three were released from prison
* ''
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three'', a 2002 true crime book by
Mara Leveritt
*
''Devil's Knot'' (film), a 2013 fictionalized retelling of the events around the West Memphis Three
References
External links
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{{West Memphis Three
2012 films
2012 documentary films
American documentary films
New Zealand documentary films
Films about lawyers
Films directed by Amy J. Berg
Films scored by Nick Cave
Films scored by Warren Ellis (musician)
Films set in 1993
Documentary films about miscarriage of justice in the United States
WingNut Films films
Sony Pictures Classics films
West Memphis Three
2010s English-language films
2010s American films
Films produced by Peter Jackson