West of Memphis (2012)

	Directed by: Amy Berg	COUNTRY USA GENRE Documentary NORWEGIAN TITLE West of Memphis RUNNING TIME 147 minutes
	Produced by: Amy Berg Fran Walsh Peter Jackson Damien Echols Lorri Davis
	Written by: Amy Berg Billy McMillin

Review

Amy Berg, the documentarist behind the explosive Deliver Us from Evil, joined forces with producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh for this dive into the notorious West Memphis Three case. Anyone with even the slightest interest in true crime will likely be familiar with it before arriving at this 2012 entry, given that Joe Berlinger released his third film about the case, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, a year before West of Memphis appeared. It's difficult for Berg to escape the sense that she's standing on the shoulders of the giant that is Berlinger, and that her film owes a little too much to his Paradise Lost series. Granted, she also never hides this fact, opening her film with a fast-paced synopsis before focusing in on the final years before Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were ultimately released – and the rather unreasonable deal they were asked to accept by the state of Arkansas. The film also portrays the celebrity activism that helped reopen the case, although their talking heads are much less interesting than both Berg and the participants seem to think. As with every chronicle about this case, the main appeal is Echols' enigmatic, intellectual persona. Unfortunately for Berg, he had already been explored better and more elaborately by Berlinger, and the fact that Echols received a production credit here is also a little problematic for the documentarian from an ethical point of view.