Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel

I think this is a fairly smartly put together true crime documentary that at the end of each episode has the viewer exactly where it wants them. It guides us through the stupid internet conspiracy theories spawned by this case and, in the light of all those weird coincidences and mysteries, it makes you wonder whether there actually isn’t something supernatural or an insane conspiracy behind it. The youtubers and other influencers are fair game, of course, and fortunately, in the fourth episode the documentary uses them to make a point: that the real problem is that today every uneducated moron has an opinion about everything and is not afraid to use the internet to share it. Poor Death Metal fan. (11.02.2021)

A new documentary series from Netflix touting the infamous Hotel Cecil, known as a hotbed of violence and death. The hotel has been the stage of several suicides and murders here, and drugs, prostitution, and even the Night Stalker lived there. It is very disappointing that the series focuses on the disappearance of Elisa Lam the whole time. I found it relatively entertaining in the first two episodes, but after four episodes, it begins to repeat itself and becomes a bit boring. The case is interesting as long as you know nothing about it, but in the end, when you find out the truth, you realise that it's not as interesting and creepy as you hoped. I would much rather see the various murders and suicides that took place in the hotel, or even the Skid Row next to it, with homeless people and crime being a daily occurrence, which I found more interesting than the whole Elisa Lam case. It's a shame, the series touts something different than it actually is. It would definitely benefit from being shortened by one episode. 6/10. (11.02.2021)

Netflix once again proves it has a good nose for a "true crime" story worthy of adaptation. The very topic of Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is an extremely tense and most of the time very chilling series. However, this time the great problem of modern television serials is already clearly evident when the selected footage and content is barely enough to really fill half of the series, and it's stretched to four hour-long episodes. I myself felt coming up with perfectly logical questions worth immediate answering after an hour into watching it but the show took its sweet time and stretched out the answers over the following episodes. In other words, the whole mystery could have been solved quicker with a feature-length documentary, or maximum a two-part series, and the audience would not have missed anything. Unfortunately, Netflix needed to create more content, so here we have a documentary that was dragged out more than it should have been, and it's quite a shame. (14.02.2021)