McKamey Manor · Michael Lewis · Martin Shkreli

Faces of Death


            
                
                    October 18, 2023
                
            McKamey Manor · Michael Lewis · Martin Shkreli
            
                
                    Plus: Inside the troubles at Last Podcast on the Left
                
            

            
                the true crime that's worth your time
            

            
                This is where we’d usually put a trailer of the show, or maybe a production-provided still. But every image on offer from “Monster Inside” is triggering enough that it makes my first two grafs seem hypocritical. So, you’re stuck with a photo of my tablet screen I took with my phone. Best Evidence is nothing if not a Klass freakin’ Act. — EB
It’s not hard to find real footage of people being tortured in the internet. Early on, sure, that sort of stuff was a mainstay of the grottier edges of the web: rotten.com, for example. Before the internet, it was a little harder, but not impossible, as since 1978 the Faces of Death film series was a teen party mainstay, a VHS tape of real or realistic harm that you could check out at your local video store. (Hell, you could even find it at the video rental counter of your local grocery store, if brave enough to ask.) 
Today, it’s front and center. Open Instagram for some calming Insta-shrink text panes on why the problem is your family, not you, and you’re hit with video of women being violently kidnapped from a music fest. Want a YouTube tutorial on the perfect Alfredo sauce1? Scroll past the news shorts with the panel of people who failed to escape from a hospital before the missiles struck. Torture has transformed from something you need a couple seconds to find to something you have to actively avoid.
That’s what makes the recent release of Hulu documentary Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House feel a little maladroit. Announced just two weeks ago via Deadline, the Oct. 12 release is clearly timed to spooky season. But given that what we’re actually talking about isn’t a “haunted house” (of either the supernatural or carnival variety), this isn’t packaging they needed to adopt — and, frankly, the project’s stated goals will probably be missed as a result. This is a movie about the real-life version of that villain in those hacky thrillers (see: Luther: The Fallen Sun and, like, a gazillion other less prestige-y versions) with the torture livestream watched by a slavering audience of thousands. But this guy does it on mainstream platforms, and his victims are willing ones…at least, until they aren’t.
            

            
                
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