After Friday’s rough cut presentation, all I felt like doing was going through and finding documentaries that seemed to relate to the content that I had been viewing that morning! My first inclination was to find a good old cult style doco, because at the end of the day who doesn’t love a good, fucked up cult? But funnily enough, the more I got into sorting through, researching, and reading up on said documentaries, I found myself feeling a little too uncomfortable to delve into that creepy mindset. And I think when it comes down to it, you have to be in the right mood for your documentary choice.
So what did I end up deciding on? None other than the totally normal, not even creepy, docodrama Casting JonBenet. I honestly don’t know how my mind works sometimes.
This documentary is one that I had been wanting to watch for a while as I remember there being so much hype and publicity around its production, but then when it did eventually have it’s release on Netflix, I became almost disinterested. It was sort of like a nice surprise when it popped up on my ‘recommended’. The style of this film is something that I can only really describe as a hybrid ‘docudrama’ in the sense that there were a handful of recreated scenes in a purely cinematic style, while the rest of the documentary comprised of interviews with all the actors who had come to audition for certain roles in the Ramsey family. The opening shot of the film is in my opinion, the film’s golden shot. The scene begins with a row of empty chairs and silence, then out of nowhere, a string of young, blonde girls dressed in identical pagent clothing, scramble to find the nearest chair to sit and face the camera. The shot then holds on the face of these girls, who are clearly there to audition for JonBenet. All so young, innocent and yet dressed beautifully as if they were fully fledged women. Fucking creepy.
The shot then changes to a close up of one of the seated girls with a clapper, introducing herself and the character she is auditioning for. She pauses, fidgets in her seat and then looks directly into the camera and questions, ‘do you know who killed JonBenet Ramsey?’ That one innocent question sets up the rest of the film’s storyline in a single sentence.
The general pot of the film moves back and forth between the many different people auditioning for the varying roles, while intermittently giving descriptions and opinions about their life, the character they’re playing, and who they think is responsible for the young girls death. We have ex-beauty pageant queens, IT guys, a teacher, police officer, but my personal favourite, Tony the sex educator. Now I thought this meant simply teaching awkward teens about the ins and outs of sex education, but oh how I was mistaken. Tony’s day job is educating adults on the ins and outs of BDSM sex, sex toy demonstrations and all. Oh and if you’re wondering, he thinks Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter.
Unfortunately for me, the film doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. It set’s itself out to be this big psychological insight, into the secret, behind-the-scenes look into what really happened the night JonBenet died. But really, we’re just watching a bunch of every day people, some with weird connections to the family, other just mere actors, giving their personal opinion as to how and why this all happened. It’s a slightly interesting insight, especially viewing the women and men, and how strongly their opinions vary. But at the end of the day what is the film really trying to do? Is it simply just reinstating the fact that everyone is still just as clueless as each other? The ending of the film is slightly compelling. There is a constructed set of the Ramsey’s house containing all the assorted actors playing the father and mother, who are placed around the room in various scenarios representing all the possibilities of what could have occurred that night. All varying from the mundane, to the absolute awful. Part of me wonders if there are any real ethical dilemmas considering how old and well publicised this story has become. Do these children auditioning for the part of a dead pagent child, really understand what it is they’re doing?And Burke Ramsey her brother, who is still alive, does he have any say over these JonBenet conspiracy films?
The thing is, this really is such an intriguing story, and one that people want solved. But until that time if ever, I think we’ll be subjected to a whole lot more JonBenet Ramsey remakes and investigations.
P.S if you want to go even further into the JonBenet murder/conspiracy world, there is an entire conspiracy theory that KATY PERRY is in fact the real, JonBenet Ramsey, and that literally our whole lives have been a lie a complete lie.
