Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.
Broomfield's follow-up to his 1992 documentary gains real weight from its proximity to Wuornos's execution, giving the film a tragic, inevitable momentum. The ending—capturing Wuornos in her final days, visibly deteriorating and yet deemed mentally competent by the state—is genuinely haunting and ethically charged, earning a strong mark. Novelty is solid given Broomfield's participatory, self-implicating style and the raw access he achieves, though the doc-as-sequel format limits its distinctiveness compared to wholly original works. The cinematography is functional at best—the handheld, fly-on-the-wall approach suits the subject but lacks visual ambition. The plot structure follows a fairly standard talking-heads-and-archival template, elevated mainly by the gravity of its subject rather than formal innovation.