Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel contains all the ingredients of a great mystery of true crime: a missing potential victim; a notorious environment; a dangerous urban environment; a multitude of suspects; an avalanche of enigmatic details; a viral video that offers far more questions than answers; and a series of coincidences – or are they synchronicities? – indicating that the matter may be a by – product of a government intrigue or supernatural phenomenon. Everything one could desire from a genre attempt is here, although ultimately the best of this four-part Netflix series (premiere on February 10), is the conclusion that critically criticizes the conspiracy theorists – and theories – which turned the first time. his story in a case célèbre.
Directed by Joe Berlinger, who is no stranger to the genre paradise lost trilogy as well as Netflix’s Conversations with a killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes–Crime: the disappearance in the Cecil Hotel relates to Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Vancouver student who disappeared on February 1, 2013 while visiting Los Angeles as part of a West Coast vacation. At the time, Lam was staying at the Cecil Hotel in the city center, a business with a large entrance and foyer that misrepresented its true shady nature as a haven for drug users, poachers and murderers. As an affordable short- and long-term home for residents of Skid Row – one of the poorest and most crime-ridden metropolitan areas in America – the Cecil has a long, infamous history, including being one of the last homes of the Blacks. wash. Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, as well as the temporary home of Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, who walked through his halls on his post-slaughter. The nickname was ‘Hotel Death’.
The Cecil’s scandalous past has inspired it for American horror story: hotel, but Lam probably did not know about his reputation. Under the supervision of manager Amy Price (who appears in new interviews), the hotel split itself in two and created a second foyer and entrance, which closed off three floors and renamed the new section “Stay on Main” as a way to attract the budget. conscious travelers. It was the ‘separate’ residence that Lam visited in early 2013. After a few days’ stay, however, she went to MIA, and leaflets posted in the city did little to bring in promising clues. Through interviews with the detectives who worked the case, as well as dramatic relaxations and narrated readings from Lam’s extensive Tumblr blog – which she considered a true online diary –Crime: the disappearance in the Cecil Hotel establishes its confusing scenario, which has initiated a significant LAPD investigation of the hotel that yields few concrete clues.
Until police discovered the video of Lam in one of Cecil’s elevators and hoped they could help everyday citizens decipher the enigmas, they posted it online.
What followed was a bona fide sensation on the internet as the Lamb hoisting video quickly went viral, sparking intense investigation and debate and inspiring a legion of “web sleuths” – these are the kind of amateur detectives who helped take down Luka Magnotta, as depicted in Do not fuck with cats—To try to unravel what’s going on in the confusing clip. In the course of four minutes, the image of Lam entering the elevator is pressed, pushing various buttons, hiding in the corner, repeatedly sticking her head out to look for (or involve?) An unseen figure and moving her hands illegally ( as if in a trance), and finally depart. Her behavior is bizarre, as well as the fact that the elevator doors remain open for an astonishingly long time, and even after they close, they reopen to show the same floor on which Lamb stands, despite the many buttons pressed on the control panel. should have sent it elsewhere.
There is no obvious explanation for this series of events, which has caused such wild online speculation and what gives Crime: the disappearance in the Cecil Hotel his deceptive hook. Even with a third installment largely spinning its wheels, Berlinger’s documentation generates tension from the staggering nature of his story. Discussions about the dangerous danger of the area and the bad legacy of the Cecil, increase the number of possible ways in which Lam may have been victimized. And as soon as her body is found – floating in one of the roof’s water tanks, which has been supplying polluted water to Cecil’s residents for weeks, the question is how she wound up in this fateful situation. Which in turn motivates motivations on the web like John Lordan and John Sobhani to investigate the viral Lamb video, examine the autopsy report and visit the Cecil in an attempt to resolve the matter.
‘Discussions about the dangerous danger of the area and the bad legacy of the Cecil, increase the number of possible ways in which Lam may have been victimized.”
Berlinger exaggerates this somewhat with the whimsical dramatic versions, but Crime: the disappearance in the Cecil Hotel benefit from a bunch of solid talking heads and a central unit that is constantly intriguing, especially once the sites start making astonishing discoveries, such as the striking similarities between Lam’s fate and the 2005 horror remake Dark water, and a government-administered tuberculosis test, which was administered on Skid Row just days after Lam disappeared – and the name is: I do not call you ‘Lam-Elisa’. The director leans heavily in these astonishing revelations, putting Lam’s Tumblr writing first, portraying her as an adventurous but worried young woman who may have been looking for friends to befriend, and who has struggled with a bipolar disorder that she was supposed to medicate. with antidepressants and antipsychotics.
In its latest installment, Crime: the disappearance in the Cecil Hotel derives what really happened to Lamb, thus providing a sharp rebuke to the online conspiracy that emerged after the debut of her viral video. A clear 21st century mystery that turns out to be a tragedy about mental illness, it is proof that fantastic online “sleuthing” (which amounts to a cute murder tourism) says much more about the desires and dreams of its practitioners than about its nominal topics – a misconception that, all too soon, arrives in a struggle with deadly QAnon madness.