This is a 3-part documentary series about hunting a murderer, which all kicked off when a lady on Facebook saw a video of a man killing kittens. I found the initial idea of the documentary quite interesting - the videos were shocking and awful - but in the end it seems to be a bunch of ideas loosely tied together with almost no connection. I can't avoid spoilers in my review - so I have marked the entire review as such.

At first a Facebook group is formed to find the murderer. They analyse everything in his room and find out he is in North America. In actuality he is located in Canada. The sleuthing is honestly very interesting and the best part of this documentary especially around the civilians doing the investigation. They analyse literally everything and they do make some progress, but unfortunately their investigations lead to the wrong individual, and more zealous members of the group abuse him until he eventually commits suicide. It is not implied that the investigation led to his suicide as he already had depression. They make no more progress until they are spoon fed the killer's name by presumably the killer himself, who is also following the investigation. The documentary is made about a crime in 2012 so you can already see how much Facebook and the internet has changed - Facebook now allows you to report accounts with fake names. Facebook has become somewhat more legitimate - it is now a website that employers check when they want to learn more about you - it has stricter guidelines on violent and graphic content and nudity.

In even the first episode we are already receiving red herrings. The group is being misled by the killer in an attempt to hide more effectively. The red herring for the viewer is the amount the group actually contributes to the investigation. They provide police in their state information about the man killing the kittens and his name, but they are ignored.

Until in episode 2, the killer murders someone. The police start investigating, there is no mention of the Facebook group or any of their contributions, in fact from this point the group takes a more passive role. The police find the body and body parts thanks to a janitor. They find out that body parts have been mailed to both major political parties in Canada. Then they find that the killer has left the apartment and no longer lives there. There are fake connections to Russia and European countries. Eventually the police join the facebook group and all the group members are rolling their eyes, however, they still contribute nothing to the investigation. The lead female detective watches his murder video and cries only when she realises he killed a puppy.

The best part in this episode is finding out who the victim is. His friend is so melancholy and still so hurt by the death of the killer's first and only victim. He mentions going to his apartment let in by the building superintendant. He sees eggs ready for frying and the cat is starving having not been fed. "He would never leave his cat like this." He alerts police, and then he later finds out there's a video. The killer playing with the vicitm's head is how he realises that it was his friend who was murdered. I really liked this part, it was very humanising for the victim to give him some backstory, not to just be part of a sick killer's murder video.

Unfortunately the documentary includes interviews with the killer's deluded mother who still proclaims his innocence. It makes you feel as if they lied to her to have her on the documentary. Her part only serves to give a backstory to the killer, which kind of helps show why he would do this evil stuff. She also believes someone was behind the scenes orchestrating the choices that the killer is making. The group also contributes nothing still and finds the killer's location too late - once he has already gone to France.

From there Interpol takes over the investigation with the French police, who again miss the killer. We have more shit from the mum, and more interviews with the 2 main group members. The final post in the group is a video from the CCTV camera of the killer being caught by the German police after fleeing Paris to Berlin. Always a step behind they finally catch him when the clerk of the internet cafe alerts them after having been online reading foreign news. This one man made much more of an impact than a facebook group of more than 5000 members, including the assistance of a group of bikies who fight animal abuse. All of these 90,000 fans and the bikie group contributed absolutely nothing to the investigation and this documentary didn't need to be 3 hours long.

In the conclusion of the final episode they bring up the idea of a pimp who is manipulating the killer into committing crimes. The huge reveal that this is part of a plotline to a movie was incredible.

If you check his wikipedia page, the killer Luka Magnotta has 1 single line stating that he was sought by animal rights groups for killing cats but he was not convicted of any of those crimes. I liked the final part of the documentary where the 2 main members of the group finally meet in Las Vegas. There is one segment where the main lady quit the group temporarily after a video of the casino she works at is released, but...nothing happens? They also leave out the fact that he committed necrophilia on the corpse. That would probably eclipse the cat murders too much.

This documentary could have been cut to half the time or even a third of the time. Now, in modern times, internet sleuths sometimes do contribute to criminal investigations and leads are investigated, but in this documentary...it didn't turn out that way.