- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Jun 28, 2020
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Critic Reviews
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While authors have produced plenty of genuinely literary true-crime books since Capote published his celebrated 1966 “nonfiction novel,” the true-crime docuseries format has been far less blessed with artful standouts. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which bears the same title as McNamara’s posthumously published 2018 book of the same title, proves that it can be done. ... Garbus doesn’t so much re-create as expand on the twilight potency of McNamara’s book. ... Six sensitive, intelligent hours.
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On one hand, this feels like a seminal entry in the true crime genre that gives survivors a chance to be heard. On the other, it may function best as a peek inside the lives of two married writers, as it's those intimate moments — the texts between Melissa and Patton and the heartbreaking way this series ends — that put a lump in my throat and elevated this series into something more.
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Intricate and absorbing. ... [Garbus] doesn’t waste a single minute of “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’s” six hours. The series works as a near-perfect example of how to manage several concurrent themes, tangents and narratives at the same time, while never once failing to captivate the viewer.
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I’ll Be Gone in the Dark can be very difficult to watch; it’s haunting and incredibly sad. But that’s also what made it all the more moving, in the end, to see the survivors join together: bonding, smiling, and living their lives in the light.
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The series is a fitting companion to McNamara's bestseller, but it's also a sprawling meditation on loss — loss of life, loss of the person you used to be — and of the secrets that haunt us. ... The power of her work, and of the series that is her legacy, is that Michelle McNamara helped forge a path for survivors — including her own family — to walk into the light. To speak, at last, and shatter the silence.
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HBO’s six-part I’ll Be Gone in the Dark isn’t merely an examination of one of most devastating and least understood criminals in modern history. It’s a heartfelt deep dive into the extraordinary everyday woman who led to his capture.
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In a fantastic HBO docuseries that shares the book’s title, director Liz Garbus (Lost Girls; What Happened, Miss Simone?) carries on the collective effort to finish McNamara’s work, fusing mystery and biography into an unusually empathetic true-crime story that feels complete at last.
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A chilling and involving six-part documentary series. ... Two-time Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee Liz Garbus (“Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” “The Fourth Estate,” “What Happened, Miss Simone?”) adds to her world-class credentials with an expertly woven narrative chronicling two equally compelling stories: the search for the Golden State Killer, and the heartbreaking story of McNamara’s own journey.
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How Garbus balances these intersecting narratives—the victims, the author, the world of true crime—is what elevates “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” a series that keeps its human core in a way that true crime offerings often don’t.
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A parade of rape enactments threatens to drag and a halo hangs dangerously over McNamara’s head at times. But “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” always rights itself and ends up both engrossing and enlightening. It doesn’t have all the answers — no one does — but it asks the right questions in the right way.
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“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” is more than a true crime documentary, although it succeeds in a terrifyingly brilliant way. What Garbus achieves is telling the story of a group of women dealing with victimization, with regrets, with fears. McNamara was a brilliant woman and this is a beautifully fitting tribute to all the things she held dear.
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Using the classy kind of re-enactments that utilize evocative shots of important objects rather than non-union actors, Garbus shoots much of I’ll Be Gone In The Dark essentially in the first-person, putting viewers into McNamara’s sleepless, paranoid mindset. And yet, she remains an elusive character.
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A skillful editor probably could have trimmed 90 minutes out of I'll Be Gone in the Dark that wouldn't be missed.
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“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” has some pacing issues and can be clumsy in its attempt to move between the various crimes, the investigation and McNamara’s impassioned quest. But it does something most true crime productions do not: It offers a form of closure for the women and men whose lives were shattered, or whose loved ones were murdered, by a prolific monster. ... But the docuseries is also a fitting eulogy for McNamara, who didn’t live to see justice served but lives on in this dueling narrative of compelling timelines.
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“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” is for the most part a well-executed juggling act as well as a thoughtful examination of the criminal justice system and its flaws, but sometimes the celebration of McNamara throws matters off balance, and the focus on where her obsessive nature would lead takes a little time to make sense. Is her book deadline, for instance, of any great significance given the gravity of the cases she’s writing about? Not really. But have patience.
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I'll Be Gone in the Dark isn't your usual, run-of-the-mill crime docu-series, which explains why it's a bit of a structural mess. Too drawn out at six parts, at its best it's a deeply personal ode to the late author and amateur crime sleuth Michelle McNamara, her dogged work to catch the Golden State Killer, and a sweetly told love story with comic Patton Oswalt.
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The more procedural parts of “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” are fascinating. ... The McNamara parts of “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” are slightly less successful, and there were times when I wondered if the series might have been stronger if it hadn’t put them on the same narrative level as the crime story. But they are nonetheless moving in their own way.
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Had the filmmakers more directly reckoned with that bittersweet aspect of DeAngelo being caught — and caught while Oswalt, Haynes, and Jensen were in the middle of a tour to promote the book, no less — then the two halves of this version of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark would feel more like a satisfying whole, rather than the often fascinating but inconsistent version HBO is debuting.
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If the aspects of the story pertaining to the Golden State Killer feel, here, the stuff of formula — one imagines the ideal delivery system to be McNamara’s book — the story of McNamara herself is told with crisp elegance. ... McNamara died before she could see justice in a case she advanced hugely, but, for a moment, she seemed to hold death in her hands. That this documentary attempts no such grandeur, seeking to explicate without ever cracking its case, is the mark of its conditional but real success.
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“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” opens some doors and then never fully explores the implications of McNamara walking through them.
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The show’s larger challenge, though, is the balancing of two different dramatic arcs — the story of the criminal and his victims, and the story of McNamara and her crusade — that aren’t as easy to connect as you might expect. Here the documentary isn’t as successful. ... What makes that especially unfortunate is that the other side of the series — the more straightforward account of the crimes, their victims and the marathon investigation — is excellent.
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In line with the autobiographical bent of the source material, I'll Be Gone in the Dark is as much an extended eulogy of McNamara as it is a recounting of the Golden State Killer case. These two modes of the six-hour docuseries finally find a shared theme in shattered domestic peace very late in the series, but McNamara, as she's depicted here by Garbus and her team, isn't dynamic enough as a traditional screen "character" to hold such sustained interest. What should be a bingeable mystery feels too often like an indulgent slog.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 25
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Mixed: 7 out of 25
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Negative: 4 out of 25
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Jul 30, 2020
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Jul 11, 2020
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Jan 14, 2021