Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
In 2016, a young Austrialian filmmaker began documenting amateur inventor Peter Madsen. One year in, Madsen brutally murdered Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine. An unprecedented revelation of a killer and the journey his young helpers take as they reckon with their own complicity and prepare to testify.
The Peter Madsen submarine murder case is one of the most bizarre and chilling true crime stories in recent memory, and this documentary benefits enormously from the unprecedented access the filmmaker had — footage shot with Madsen before and during his unraveling gives the film an eerie, singular quality that most true crime docs simply cannot replicate. The novelty of having an embedded documentarian witness the lead-up to a high-profile murder from the inside is genuinely one-of-a-kind. The plot structure is compelling, weaving the investigative journalism angle with the personal reckoning of those who worked with Madsen. Cinematography is serviceable but not particularly distinguished beyond the archival submarine footage. Acting is not really applicable in a traditional sense for a documentary, though subjects' on-camera presence varies. The ending, while factually resolved, doesn't land with exceptional emotional or narrative power.