Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

That's really all there is to it. This film is raw. This film will tear into you. More than just emotional, this film is magnetic. What is it really? A simple film; a simple subject. This movie is put together with simple style. It's mostly interviews and mostly hand-held, and yet somehow it eclipses so many more complex and more expensive movies when it comes to emotion. Like I said, this film is magnetic. It is not a movie that you have to work yourself up to watch. Sit down, press play, and this thing will take you. This is the sort of movie that makes you pay attention to it and once you pay attention to it, there's no escaping its impact. More so than any thriller, this is a movie that you can't look away from. Even if you already know how it will end, this film will affect you. At the end of the day, there must just be something to seeing someone look you in the eye, and pour their heart out. That's what this movie is all about.

I came to this expecting something more or less gratuitous, a ghastly backwoods crime along with some lurid mystery. It does open with the mangled bodies of children discovered by Arkansas police in the woods and we go on to experience the baleful place that surrounds this crime, ruled by a vengeful god.But centered on the trial that follows I was surprised to see something else, entirely more revealing about a larger ignorance and worthy of Herzog as a study on delusion.The events are troubling. Three kids were horribly murdered, three kids were arrested for it, based on dubious testimony from one of the kids; an undocumented 12 hour interrogation, questions guiding answers, a frightened kid susceptible to suggestion.The rest of the evidence is not much better, from circumstantial to ridiculous. A knife dug out near someone's home, pentagrams found on a book about Wicca, tied to that hysterical malarkey about satanic murders then sweeping the media.What we have plain and simple is a case of miscarried justice unfolding before our eyes in that courtroom. This is not to say (from just having seen a film) that the kids definitely didn't do it, we would be as dogmatic as the redneck prosecutors then, but that we are far and away from any certainty.It's basically a modern day witch hunt that we see, I mean, if you ever wanted to see how these things happened, it's right here, and this is 20 years ago in a first world country. It's also direct insight of how that hysteria with satanic cults started and was kept going.But it's the larger ignorance at play that fascinates me. The baleful ire of parents is understandable I guess. But how dismaying to see a fuddy daddy in his 60s with a mailorder diploma brought on to testify as "expert on the occult"? What are we to make of juvenile witnesses who come out to testify that the kids confessed to them? Or how the prosecution just presses on to get a conviction, acting like the matter is clear cut and simply comes down to evil, just because it says in their job description that they have to prosecute?So even more chilling than kids who can be grabbed and senselessly murdered in the woods just like that is the realization that lives can hinge on such ignorant storytelling, because this is meant to be the mechanism that restores clarity, and instead we have this dogmatic insistence on using stories to explain a reality that is complex, elusive and often beyond certainty. This is an even more blind ignorance, because it thinks of itself as justice and reason and doesn't need to hide its irrationality out in the woods but can take place in a courtroom in broad daylight with us watching.You'll see this in the film itself. The filmmakers cast an accusing glance on a step-father, why, because he acts weird.

With the recent release of the closing chapter to the trilogy, Paradise Lost: Purgatory (2011), and the Peter Jackson-funded West of Memphis (2012), it seemed a perfect time to re-visit the original HBO documentary that focused on the original trial of the accused now known as the West Memphis Three. Knowing now that they have only recently been released in 2011, the first thing that shocked me about the first film was realising it was made way back in 1996, and the trial was back in 1993. I was 8 in 1993, and I cannot imagine the torment that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. went through, spending almost twenty years in prison for a crime they did not commit. Paradise Lost is still as utterly sickening as it was when I first viewed it over five years ago.The question here is not if these three were innocent of this hideous crime - you can make your own mind up about that - but it is how can three teenage boys be sentenced to life in prison (and the death penalty for Echols) with not a shred of evidence against them? The irony is that these murders were believed to be the work of satanic sacrifice, but the West Memphis Three were condemned to a modern day witch-hunt by ignorant townsfolk terrified of them because they wore black and refused to blend in with the dungaree-wearing hicks in their dirt-poor neighbourhood. It seemed like everyone was against them, eager to lay the blame on something they simply did not understand. Judge David Burnett highlighted the need for evidence of a motive, so the answer was to get 'expert' testimony from a man with a mail-order PhD in the occult. When his lack of qualifications is highlighted by the attorney representing Echols, this is dismissed without a second thought.Film-makers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were granted unlimited access to the entire trial, so as a documentary, it is incredibly detailed. After the uproar this film caused, this access was quickly denied for the sequel, no doubt they were terrified that more shameful misconduct would be unearthed. Interviewers are given by the parents of the accused and of the three murdered boys (Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch), and their emotion is laid out raw. Special attention is given to John Mark Byers, stepfather to Christopher, who handed the film-makers a hunting knife stained with blood as a present, which was quickly handed over to the authorities. Byers is a strange and often terrifying character, pumping bullets into a target and stating his wishes that he could do the same to the three boys on trial. It is easy to find yourself thinking that he must be the real killer, but as the trilogy of films progress, I learned that appearances can be deceiving, and that I was guilty of the exact same thing that led to the imprisonment of the West Memphis Three.This is powerful stuff, provoking more emotion than probably any other film I have ever seen. The atmosphere is extremely gloomy, right from the get-go when we see crime scene footage of the young boys hardened corpses lying naked in the woods. It certainly doesn't pull its punches, and Metallica's magnificent soundtrack, the first time they have ever allowed their music to be used in film, only adds to this. But ultimately, it's the story itself that proves to be the most powerful aspect. They were guilty from the moment they came to court - these sullen kids with their black clothes and long hair. Individuality doesn't go down well in the Bible Belt, it would seem. As each heavily flawed accusation flies at Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley, you must simply watch and grit your teeth. This is a truly terrifying story and also one full of tragedy, both for the young boys who were murdered and for the three that were the fall guys swept up by an almost neo-Nazi institution.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

I always believed that a case needed only reasonable doubt to find people innocent. Apparently I was very wrong. I am in no way claiming my support for the three found guilty, but I for one could never convict them based on this evidence. The film shows just how unstable people can be when faced with those that don't conform. I was amazed by how much I disliked the parents of the murdered boys. They ramble and scream about killing these three, already convinced of their guilt. They seem more unstable and threatening to me, and not just because their children have been murdered. No real physical evidence is brought up against the boys, whom should probably start training professional killers on how not to leave evidence at a murder site. I know for a fact that a lot of details were left out of this documentary, and the celebrity worship that has followed the accused since is a bit too much. However this film is terrifying. It shows that just because of the way you look, and what people say about you, can take away your entire life. Make sure to check out all the evidence for yourself.