While we may not have been familiar with the events covered in the Netflix true crime series Making a Murderer before the series aired, we are all at least passingly familiar with the subject of the network’s newest documentary. It centers around Amanda Knox, an ordinary American college student whose Italian roommate was killed while she was studying abroad in Perugia. She was subsequently charged with the crime in 2009 and sentenced to 26 years in prison. In Italy, this was widely viewed as justice. In America, however, many were outraged. As part of the normal Italian legal process, Knox was tried again in 2010 and found not guilty. She returned to the U.S., but the story did not end there. In 2013, Italy’s highest court decided to try the case again. Knox was finally acquitted in 2015.
While the new documentary doesn’t, allegedly, offer any bombshells, it will feature interviews with “Foxy Knoxy,” as the media monikered Amanda at the height of her infamy. Some reviewers have said she seems ill at ease on camera, and who wouldn’t in her situation? This is a woman who was vilified and sensationalized by the global media, who went to jail in a foreign land for a crime she claims not to have committed, and who was just the same as you or I before any of this took place. The film, according to The Guardian, offers “a meta-commentary on our obsession with true crime.” We wish we were better than wanting to watch it, but we can’t help but be as fascinated by the whole charade as we were when the scandalous story first hit the presses back in 2007; however, this time, at least, Amanda will have some say in her own story. Amanda Knox debuts on Netflix on September 30.
