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VSrhyme Scene: The disappearance at the Cecil Hotel has all the ingredients for a real crime mystery: a potential missing victim; an infamous place; a dangerous urban environment; a crowd of suspects; an avalanche of confusing details; a viral video that provides many more questions than answers; and a series of coincidences – or are they synchronicities? – which suggest the case may be the by-product of a government conspiracy or supernatural phenomena. Everything one could dream of from a genre effort is here, though ultimately the best part about this four-part Netflix series (premiering February 10) is its conclusion, which delivers a scathing critique of the conspiracy theorists – and theories – who for the first time turned its history into a famous cause.
Directed by Joe Berlinger, who is no stranger to the genre – having directed the lost paradise trilogy as well as Netflix Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes–Crime scene: the disappearance at the Cecil hotel concerns Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old student from Vancouver who went missing on February 1, 2013, while traveling to Los Angeles as part of a West Coast vacation. At the time, Lam was staying at the downtown Cecil Hotel, an establishment with a majestic entrance and lobby that falsely represented his true shadowy nature as a haven for drug users, pimps, and killers. As a cheap short and long term residence for the residents of Skid Row – among the poorest and most criminal metropolitan areas in America – the Cecil had a long and notorious history, including having been one of the last reported Black residences. Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, as well as the temporary home of Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, who used to wander its hallways, naked and bloodied, on his way after the slaughter to his bedroom. Its nickname was “Hotel Death”.
Cecil’s scandalous past was the inspiration for American Horror Story: Hotel, but Lam probably didn’t know his reputation. Under the direction of manager Amy Price (featured in new interviews), the hotel split in two, creating a second lobby and entrance, demarcating three floors and renaming this new section “Stay on Main” as a means of ‘attract the budget. conscious travelers. It was this “separate” hostel that Lam visited in early 2013. After a few days of staying, however, she went to MIA, and the flyers posted around the city did little to attract promising prospects. Through interviews with the detectives who worked on the case, as well as dramatic recreations and narrated readings of Lam’s sprawling Tumblr blog – which she treated like a real online diary –Crime scene: the disappearance at the Cecil hotel establishes his puzzling scenario, which launched a major LAPD investigation into the hotel which revealed some concrete clues.
Until the cops discovered Lam’s security camera video in one of Cecil’s elevators and, hoping ordinary citizens could help decipher his puzzles, they posted it online.
What followed was a real internet sensation, as Lam’s elevator video quickly went viral, sparking intense scrutiny and debate, and inspiring a legion of “web sleuths,” the kind of amateur sleuths who helped eliminate Luka Magnotta, as shown Don’t fuck with cats– to try to unravel what was going on in the confusion clip. Over the course of four minutes, this footage shows Lam entering the elevator, pushing several buttons, hiding in the corner, repeatedly pushing his head to seek (or engage?) An invisible figure, moving his hands erratically ( as if in a trance), and finally at the start. Its behavior is bizarre, as is the fact that the elevator doors remain open for an incredibly long time, and even after they close, they then reopen to reveal the same floor Lam was on – this despite the many buttons being pressed on. his control panel that should have sent him elsewhere.
There is no obvious explanation for this series of events, which sparked such wild online speculation, and which gives Crime scene: the disappearance at the Cecil hotel its alluring hook. Even with a third episode largely spinning its wheels, Berlinger’s docuseries generate suspense from the baffling nature of his tale. Discussions of the region’s lousy dangerousness and Cecil’s sordid legacy increase the number of possible ways Lam could have fallen victim. And once her body is found – floating in one of the rooftop water tanks, which had been supplying contaminated water to Cecil residents for weeks – the question of how she ended up in this situation. fatal remains disconcerting. Which, in turn, motivates web sleuths like John Lordan and John Sobhani to look into Lam’s viral video, review the autopsy report, and visit the Cecil to try and resolve the case.
“Discussions of the region’s lousy dangerousness and Cecil’s sordid legacy increase the number of possible ways Lam could have fallen victim.“
Berlinger does a bit too much with the spooky dramatic reenactments, but Crime scene: the disappearance at the Cecil hotel boasts a series of solid talking heads and a central thriller that continually proves to be intriguing, especially when web sleuths start to make some startling discoveries, such as the striking similarities between Lam’s fate and the horror remake from 2005 Dark waterand a government-made tuberculosis test that was administered on Skid Row just days after Lam disappeared – and which was named, I’m not kidding, “Lam-Elisa.” The director leans heavily on these staggering revelations, while also bringing Lam’s Tumblr writing to the fore, which portrays her as an adventurous but troubled young woman who may be looking for strangers to befriend and struggling. against a bipolar disorder she was supposed to treat. with antidepressants and antipsychotics.
In its last installment, Crime scene: the disappearance at the Cecil hotel deduces what really happened to Lam, and in doing so, he offers a stern rebuke to the online conspiratorial conjecture that has arisen following the debut of his viral video. A distinctly 21st mystery of the century that turned out to be a mental illness tragedy, it is proof that the fantastic online “sleuth” (which often equates to ghoulish murderous tourism) says much more about the desires and dreams of its practitioners than on its nominal subjects – a censorship which, coming in 2021 grappling with a bane of QAnon’s deadly madness, is too timely.
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