If this was a standalone movie with an original story, I would think it's good story. The acting is good and the performances are believable. But the story is flat and confusing without context. The problem is the fact that the story has context that the writer completely decided to ignore.
The movie's climax portrays an incident that's almost innocent, a sad tragedy of four misguided youth that almost says that ..."if only these kids had better parents, opportunities or choices , the tragedy wouldn't have happened."
In reality this is based on a true story that the writer admitted to researching through social media and not talking to any family members or even the killers. He also admitted to attending the funerals and trials but used very little of the real story. He cloaks that decision with a " exhaustive creative research" justification.
The problem with all of this is that in his attempt to tell a "real" story, he portrays an "alternative facts" story that's actually more Hollywood than reality.
There are millions of misguided kids out their that lived in a racially tense environments that didn't murder two of their acquaintances in cold blood and that alone would make a great movie. But this real story is far from that.
The real story is a story of a very privileged criminal that was allowed to torment his friends and their families without barely having a record before he committed this crime. The men and girls admitted to killing the other two and having sex on top of the dead bodies. He also admitted to trying to skin one of victims face off in order to post it on Instagram. All of this was left out of the movie because I guess it would've spoiled The good kids gone wrong creative story.
My point is , a story about the troubles of growing up in the Midwest would've been an amazing study even without murder. But to take a real life murder to creatively alter reality just seems lazy and disrespectful.
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