At their greatest, documentary movies pierce and probe their topic to shed as a lot insightful understanding as attainable. This basic storytelling tenet is obviously and unethically absent from Netflix‘s new true-crime documentary, Unknown Quantity: The Excessive Faculty Catfish, the streamer’s #1 film within the U.S. Whereas viewers will undoubtedly be shocked by the id of the perpetrator, they are going to be equally disenchanted and pissed off by the dearth of journalistic integrity to ask one easy query: Why?
Worse but, because the movie unfolds, it turns into much less an goal account of information and extra of a soapbox for the perpetrator to gaslight, deflect, justify, and spin their very own story in ways in which make her seem just like the sufferer, slightly than the blood relative that she traumatized for years. Regardless of the unbelievable true story and fashionable viewership, Unknown Quantity is among the most ineffective and irresponsible true-crime documentaries on report.
‘Unknown Quantity: The Excessive Faculty Catfish’s Irritating Story
Directed with no ethical spine by Skye Borgman (Kidnapped in Plain Sight), the brand new Netflix true-crime documentary Unknown Quantity tells the tragic true story of teenager Lauryn Licari in 2022. Lauryn lives in a tiny, one-stoplight city in Beal Metropolis, Michigan, the place everybody is aware of one another. Lauryn had been courting a well-liked boy named Owen McKenny. Throughout their courtship, Lauryn and Owen started receiving a whole bunch, if not hundreds, of ugly, foul-mouthed, deeply hurtful textual content messages from an unknown telephone quantity.
The messages implored the 2 youngsters to interrupt up, which they finally did after the harassment grew to become insufferable. After dying down for a short while, Lauryn started receiving much more harassing textual content messages, insulting her look, saying she is nugatory, telling her to kill herself, and different unspeakable issues that no younger particular person ought to ever expertise. The issue continued for therefore lengthy that the FBI was introduced in to analyze the case because the unknown caller continued to stalk and harass Lauryn.
Much less concerned with attending to the underside of the harassment and extra concerned with surprising viewers with a giant twist, the FBI finally traces the unknown quantity to Lauryn’s mom, Kendra Licari. Kendra, a former IT employee, had been fired from her job years earlier than, stored it a secret from her household, and spent her downtime sending tens of hundreds of profane texts to her personal daughter that can not be repeated in print. For what motive? The filmmakers by no means even suppose to ask.
‘Unknown Quantity’ Platforms & Sympathizes with a Monster
As soon as the FBI tracks the harassing telephone calls to the Licari house, native Beal Metropolis police arrive to make an arrest. Confronted with the crime, Kendra throws her second telephone (with incriminating proof) within the bushes and provides a halfhearted act of contrition for harassing her daughter. Treating her with child gloves, the police officer by no means as soon as requests a proof or tries to grasp the motivation. The officer barely has the nerve to inform Lauryn that her mom is the one who despatched all of the painful messages.
Shawn Licari, Kendra’s husband and Lauryn’s father, returns from out of city and is shocked to study that she is the one who has been tormenting Lauryn for years. Shawn additionally discovers that Kendra has not been working for years and has been mendacity to him. Kendra additionally lied to Owen McKenny’s mom, Jill, and pretended to assist their household discover the perpetrator when it was her all alongside.
After depicting the arrest, the documentary provides Kendra the ground to talk in a one-on-one interview. By no means as soon as does Borgman surprise or ask what motivated a mom to mistreat her daughter for therefore lengthy. For a documentary movie, there’s zero curiosity about what issues most.
After all, one can by no means absolutely perceive the twisted thoughts of a legal. However it might be good for somebody to press Kendra for a real motive for psychologically abusing her personal daughter repeatedly. Maybe it would not matter. Perhaps no rationalization may ever justify the result. Nevertheless, not asking why is one factor. Platforming and sympathizing with a monster who ought to stay in jail is sort of one other.
Who Is the Sufferer in ‘Unknown Quantity’?
As irritating as it’s to be given zero motivational rationalization for Kendra’s crimes, what’s worse is how the doc begins to sympathize together with her and paint her because the sufferer. In deflecting the why of all of it, Kendra is allowed to gaslight Lauryn and the viewers by claiming that she didn’t begin the harassing texts, however continued them after they started. This can be a brazen lie. So, too, is the mealy-mouthed rationalization that Kendra “continued” to harass her daughter as a manner to assist her discover the actual perpetrator.
In Kendra’s deranged view, she despatched the horrific messages to glean details about who actually began the textual content chain. But, it was her all alongside. The film not solely permits Kendra to spin an internet of face-saving deceit, however the extra it continues, it additionally begins to facet with and sympathize together with her slightly than Lauryn. The victimhood shifts from daughter to mom by means of an immoral lens that cracks beneath any critical scrutiny.
Much more irritating is how little Lauryn appears to care about what her mom put her by means of years faraway from the incident. Lauryn is fast to forgive Kendra and specific her unconditional love for her mom. Just like the police and the filmmakers, Lauryn hardly even wonders why Kendra did what she did. The result’s so unsatisfying that every one one can do is sit again and surprise why this film was made.
To be clear, Lauryn Licari is the first sufferer. By exposing numerous on-screen textual content messages that she is compelled to dwell by means of once more within the Netflix true-crime documentary, Unknown Quantity can solely compound her trauma; it actually would not scale back it. As an alternative of giving Kendra the platform to clarify why she abused her little one, the doc permits her to distract, obfuscate, paint herself as a sufferer, and supply completely nothing of substance that may ever justify her crimes.
Unknown Quantity: The Excessive Faculty Catfish is on the market to stream on Netflix