Already the subject of three HBO documentaries that took a slapdash approach to arranging its key facts (the PARADISE LOST trilogy), the shocking case of the West Memphis Three is again examined by director Amy Berg in WEST OF MEMPHIS. Here, she creates a sprawling, inclusive, sometimes biased catalogue of a long running voyage of justice. In 1994, the town of West Memphis in Arkansas was shattered by the heinous murders of three eight-year-old boys, which resulted in the accusations of three teenagers who were wrongfully said to have been part of the increasing rise of rituals practised by satanic cults.

Although their confessions were questionable, and the coerced nature of their convictions was dubious, the judge who presided over the case refused to give in to the rising petitions for a retrial. He took every problematic piece of evidence on face value and believed that the judicial system had found and rightfully incarcerated the true killers. After eighteen years of mounting public and legal pressures to have the three men – Damian Echols (the supposed ring leader and this film’s producer), Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin – set free, due to both their pleas of innocence and the actual lack of credible proof, they were eventually let go through a curious legal loophole.

Berg’s assiduously researched documentary is dense and absorbing, a passionately collected amalgamation of such a meandering – and still inconclusive – case.

Produced by Echols and his fiercely dedicated wife Lorri Davis, as well as filmmakers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh (who committed their support and helped fund the campaign), Berg’s assiduously researched documentary is dense and absorbing, a passionately collected amalgamation of such a meandering – and still inconclusive – case.

Repackaging the issues covered in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s PARADISE LOST trilogy and highlighting new twists and information (including, amongst other sections, witness statements). WEST OF MEMPHIS is an engrossing depiction of an American phenomenon, even if the film ends on a jovial and overly sunny note, unable to come to a proper conclusion because the case remains unsolved. Amy Berg’s impressive documentary is decisive and knowingly one-sided, pointing fingers in debatably innocent directions and compiling a strong indictment of the failings of the police and the legal system.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfu4Venq99k