Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel it has all the ingredients of a great mystery of true crime: a possible missing victim; an infamous place; a dangerous urban environment; a crowd of suspects; an avalanche of disconcerting details; a viral video that provides many more questions than answers; and a series of coincidences — or are they synchronicities? – which suggest that the affair could be the by-product of a government plot or supernatural phenomena. All that could be desired with a genre effort is here, although ultimately the best thing about this Netflix four-series series (released on February 10) is its conclusion, which offers a poignant critique of the same conspiracy theorists — and theories — that were first transformed. his tale in a famous cause.
Directed by Joe Berlinger, who is no stranger to the genre, having directed the Paradise lost trilogy, as well as that of Netflix Conversations with an Assassin: Ted Bundy’s Tapes–Crime scene: The disappearance at the Hotel Cecil refers to Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Vancouver student who disappeared on February 1, 2013 while visiting Los Angeles as part of a vacation on the west coast. At the time, Lam was staying at the downtown Cecil Hotel, an establishment with a large entrance and lobby that distorted its true gloomy nature as a refuge for drug users, pimps and murderers. As a cheap short- and long-term residence for the people of Skid Row — among the poorest and most crime-ridden metropolitan areas in America — Cecil had a long and notorious history, including being one of the last black residences. Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, as well as the temporary home of Richard Ramirez, also known as the Night Stalker, who used to walk through his rooms, naked and bloody, on his way after the massacre to his room. His nickname was “Death Hotel”.
Cecil’s outrageous past turned him into inspiration American Horror Story: Hotel, but Lam probably did not know his reputation. Under the direction of manager Amy Price (who appears in the new interviews), the hotel split in two, creating a second lobby and entrance, cordoning off three floors and changing the name of this new section to “Keep you in the Main ”as a means to attract budget conscious travelers. It was that “separate” hostel that Lam visited in early 2013. After a few days of staying, however, he moved to the MIA and the flyers published by the city did little to promote it. Through interviews with the detectives who worked on the case, as well as dramatic recreations and narrated readings of Lam’s extensive Tumblr blog, which she treated as a veritable online newspaper.Crime scene: The disappearance at the Hotel Cecil sets its disconcerting scenario, which initiated a significant LAPD investigation into the hotel that showed few concrete clues.
Until, that is, the police discovered the video of Lam’s security camera inside one of Cecil’s elevators and, hoping that everyday citizens could help decipher its riddles, released it. on the Net.
What followed was a bona fide internet sensation, as the video from the Lam elevator quickly went viral, sparking intense debate and debate, and inspiring a legion of “network details”. such as the types of amateur detectives who helped bring down Luka Magnotta, as shown Don’t burden yourself with cats—To try to unravel what was happening in the clip of confusion. Over the course of four minutes, that footage shows Lam entering the elevator, pushing several buttons, hiding in the corner, repeatedly pulling his head out to look for (or stick?) An invisible figure, moving his hands irregularly ( as if a trance), and finally march. Their behavior is strange, as is the fact that the elevator doors remain open for an incredibly long time and even after closing them, they reopen to reveal the same floor that Lam had, this despite the numerous buttons pressed on the control panel that should have sent it elsewhere.
There is no obvious explanation for this series of events, which is what provoked such wild online speculation and what gives Crime scene: The disappearance at the Hotel Cecil his seductive hook. Even with a third episode that spins its wheels to a great extent, Berlinger’s docuseries generate suspense due to the baffling nature of his tale. Discussions about the dangerous danger of the area and Cecil’s sordid legacy increase the number of possible ways in which Lam could have been a victim. And once his body is found — floating in one of the roof water tanks, which for weeks had been providing contaminated water to Cecil’s residents — the question of how he ended up in this fatal situation remains puzzling. Which, in turn, motivates network details like John Lordan and John Sobhani to examine the Lam viral video, examine the autopsy report, and visit Cecil in an attempt to resolve the case.
“Discussions about the dangerous danger of the area and Cecil’s sordid legacy increase the number of possible ways in which Lam could have been a victim.”
Berlinger exaggerates it a bit with the creepy dramatic recreations, though Crime scene: The disappearance at the Hotel Cecil benefits from a series of solid talking heads and a central unit that is intriguing, especially when network details begin to make startling discoveries, such as the striking similarities between Lam’s fate and the 2005 horror remake Dark water, and a government-made tuberculosis test that was administered at Skid Row a few days after Lam disappeared and it was said, “I have none,” Lam-Elisa. ”The director leans intensely into these stunning revelations, all while writing Lam’s Tumblr writing, which portrays her as a young adventurer but with problems she may have been looking for strangers to make friends with and battling a bipolar disorder she was supposed to be medicating with antidepressants and antipsychotics.
In its latest installment, Crime scene: The disappearance at the Hotel Cecil he deduces what really happened to Lam and in doing so offers a strong rebuke to the online conspiracy assumption that arose as a result of the debut of his viral video. A clearly 21c last century’s mystery that turned out to be a tragedy about mental illness, is proof that the fantastic online “break” (often equivalent to a murder tourism) says so much more about the desires and dreams of its professionals than about their nominal subjects. a censorship that, coming to a 2021 with a scourge of deadly QAnon madness, is too timely.