Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Looking at the life of Aileen through this documentary, you can easily tell Aileen has been through a lot to get to how crazy she is. According to her adopted mom, Aileen was homeless at a young age of 13. She would sleep alone in the forest, even in the blistering winter. Desperate and willing, Aileen became a hitchhiking prostitute traveling the country everyday. From 1989-1990 seven men were murdered by the hands of Aileen Wuornos. When Aileen was brought into custody, she confessed to the murders, but claimed they were in self defense. Her fair trail lasted 12 years, coming to an end in 2002 when she was executed by Florida Officials. It was quite sad to see Aileen early in the trials persuading juror's and judges by crying and lying under oath about how she was raped and tortured severely. Then later down the trial towards her end days there is footage of her admitting she was lying the entire time and that she was in the prostitute business to rob men and kill them. Aileen in her end days compared to her in the beginning of the trial is two different people. She became very paranoid and went mad, she was executed October 9th, 2002, at the age of 46.

Nick Broomfield, a reflexive filmmaker, using a minimum crew, grabs the title's famed personality and important political context in this film, which was to be the peak of his observations on the filmmaker as accomplice and his original documentary on Aileen Wuornos is introduced as evidence during a new trial depicted in this one, he himself called as a witness. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer comes to stand, very alarmingly, as the final wailings from a woman struggling to battle her own commodification. Not even Charlize Theron's striking portrayal of the accused can rival the entrancing real thing, whose premeditated admissions of regret hardly mask her cancerous rage at a life span of abuse, oppression, exploitation and neglect.A poignant examination of a destroyed and atrophied life and an inarguable denunciation of the death penalty and its supporters, this film is a major paradigm shift. After over a decade on death row, Wuornos, who persistently claimed self-defense from rape by her seven victims, upturned her initial testimony, saying that she committed the murders and wanted to atone with God. Broomfield's camera, at one point, keeps rolling unbeknownst to Wuornos, and she comes clean to the documentarian that she could not carry on her death row vigil and just wants it all to be over. Jeb Bush signed the execution order to grant her wish, claiming it the moral and correct thing to do.Broomfield and his collaborator Joan Churchill, using Wuornos' past as a background, cement a dissertation that negates the pro-death penalty case made by its advocates, most significantly Jeb Bush who wants Florida to be more like Texas when it comes to killing convicts. The documentarians grill this negligence for human life and cite the 100 or more cases where a death row inmate was released as innocent. This should be enough to abolish the barbarity. Link this affirmation with the barefaced, obvious and palpable proof of Aileen's unstable state of mind.Again, the power of the film comes from its merging of the angry political framework with its unspeakable personal strife. Broomfield resolutely uses his camera to show the aggrieved, bewildered mental state of his subject. He pins down her history, supplying abundant verification for her present state. The media spectacle that envelops death row as Aileen's execution approaches exposes the freak show that cultivated this unfortunate woman. After Aileen's death is broadcast, the statement made to the press details her last words, incoherence about Jesus and spaceships.To most people, the proof of the senses is generally reliable. We say seeing's believing. If someone asks, "How do you know someone's in the bathroom?" it's sufficient to say, "Because I saw and heard them." Consistent with the conventions of day-to-day life, an assertion's verified if we can refer to some sense encounter as proof of it. But the senses are vulnerable, exposed. Even a more internally unfailing practice may not match with any truth. Historical fact and deduction may all be coherent, but maybe things didn't occur that way. You could even say science and mathematics, while making purely logical sense, may not illustrate truth at all. How many detective stories involve evidence clearly pointing to a character who turns out to be innocent after all? Vice versa? Perhaps the most telling moment of the film is when Broomfield has to pretend the camera is off for Aileen to say something, something very distressing that may or may not be the truth, but to her, it's gospel.

to see films like this. When the media dehumanizes a person for profit, and thanks to Nick Broomfield, we see the other side. A 13 year old girl raped and impregnated by her grandfather, who slept in the freezing Michigan forest when her family kicked her out of their house.Shame on Diane, Aileen's mother, who sits and states that Aileen loved living as a homeless person. The denial in this abusive family is rampant. I was actually angry and upset by this film.Actions have consequences. Abuse starts at home, and this entire situation escalated to the point it did because an abused woman finally lost her grip on life, she had no help, no means of support, and the state of Florida was only too pleased to step in and garner media attention during an election year.Capital punishment does not provide a deterrent (this is a scientific fact) but it does prove man's inhumanity. Thank you Mr. Broomfield for this upsetting documentary. 10/10.

The part that really blew MY mind was the serial killer's friend, Dawn Bodkins, INSISTING that gay people did not exist until recently.WTF? THAT woman clearly ingested too many drugs in her youth - what a stupid thing to say!.Wrounos' mother, Diane - this woman abandoned her kids and she's acting as if she knew nothing about the hell her daughter went through (sleeping in the woods in the Michigan winter, etc.) I guess it never occurred to her that she might have had something to do with the way Aileen turned out!Wrounos belonged in an insane asylum, not executed. And this comes from a lifelong proponent of capital punishment. Something was clearly mentally wrong with that woman! The last interview proved it.Scary - but you can't look away