Making a Murderer

As entertainment, Murderer remains expertly made, its seductive slow pace gripping viewers by the neck; as morality play, its terms are kept blunt and simplistic enough by Zellner to come through. As advocacy, though, it achieved precisely the opposite of its mission from the start. Building a season around a few years of thwarted Avery and Dassey appeals, cases blunted by the very enthusiasm that the show fostered, ends up lacking much of a point at all, beyond sustaining itself as a TV show.

Right now, Part 2 feels like false hope, and the filmmakers would’ve been better off waiting for something to happen before pushing out another wearying report.

I admire that it's more driven by intellect than passion, while lamenting its lack of clear and smooth construction.

Part 2 is the equivalent of fan service: further confirmation that they're innocent, demonstrated by an even more painstaking examination of the flawed evidence against them. But for those with a more casual interest in the cases and the true-crime genre they helped spawn, the sequel is a lesser version of the original, with the same style and trappings slapped on a less-compelling story.