- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Jan 13, 2021
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Critic Reviews
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Almost certain to keep you in its grips from the opening sequences to the final images. We are very early in the 2021 viewing season, but it’s difficult to imagine any project in this genre having a more profound impact. This is great television.
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The four-part series is a powerful and haunting addition to the streamer’s onslaught of true-crime fare, but more than that, it deftly captures a place and time that many Angelenos will remember as part of their collective history.
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Night Stalker makes for a compelling if grisly binge-watch on the level of the streamer's Evil Genius and Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez.
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Night Stalker: The Hunt For A Serial Killer might be to[o] grisly for some viewers. But for true crime fans, it’s a well-paced series that has a different perspective than most series in the genre.
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A robust selection of archived news clips which feature concerned citizens discussing their fears for themselves and their communities clearly demonstrates the way this serial killer dominated the collective consciousness. When, in the fourth and final episode, Carillo and Salerno finally identify the killer and bring him into custody (aided by a band of community members), it feels like justice has been served — both narratively and, more importantly, for the victims.
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The “nature of evil” questions that Ramirez inspires often wander into navel-gazing banality, but the human cost of reining in such evil—and the moral accounting—elevates “Night Stalker” from mere police procedural into something far more sophisticated and complicated.
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Ramirez lurks in the shadows throughout Night Stalker, his presence unseen but chillingly felt. Instead, the main characters of the piece are Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detectives Frank Salerno and Gil Carrillo, the lead investigators in the hunt for the murderer. ... The takeaway here is a fable about how the love of his family saved one detective from being overwhelmed by the darkness that ripped so many other families apart.
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The documentary lives in the construction of the case and the criminal profile — details like an Aviva shoe print or discarded bullet casings or bizarre dental records — and there's a methodical progression that Russell adheres to that I admired.
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While Night Stalker does many things well, namely its insistence on presenting the victims with compassion, the docuseries fails to answer the question, "Why?" What was Ramirez’s motive and how can we use this knowledge to prevent future crimes? What lessons can we take from community involvement in policing from this story and use it to make our neighborhoods safer? What is the purpose of telling this horrendous story if not to make a statement about it that can be used going forward?
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Recentering an awful story from the perpetrator to the victims and heroes is undeniably valuable, but the production here misses a bit more often than true crime fans would hope. Often feeling tabloid-esque in its craft and failing to dig into some of the bigger issues here like how law enforcement communicates (or doesn't).
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Ramirez’s crimes were narrated confusingly. There was too much about the hunters not enough about the hunted.
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Except for a curiously brief mention of an abusive childhood and an almost rhetorical question about the nature of evil, Night Stalker dispenses with any deeper study of Ramirez. By doing so, it also misses out on the chance to make a more memorable study of an unforgettable series of crimes.
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Where the series goes horribly, offensively awry is in the lurid packaging of the very solid interviews with the police, journalists, surviving victims, and families. Real crime-scene photos are used throughout the series, a choice that is profoundly upsetting but necessary to illustrate the animalistic horror.
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Night Stalker’s fundamental flaw is a lack of purpose. It’s too meretricious to qualify as a “serious” documentary – it doesn’t tell you all that much that a trawl through Wikipedia could not – but its subject matter is too dark and depraved to qualify as light entertainment. Leave aside the sinister tone and genre cliches, and you’re left with not all that much: no exploration of evil, just a rote itinerising of it.
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As an analysis of social madness, “Night Stalker,” directed by Tiller Russell, makes some interesting points; those, though, tend to be studded within a project that gives itself away to mania more frequently. Clogged with high-gloss but somewhat ludicrous footage, “Night Stalker” knows it’s about the deaths of innocents only inasmuch as that makes for a riveting story, but it lacks the seriousness of purpose to tell its story well. ... “Night Stalker” seeks to re-create a climate of nasty fear for no ultimate higher purpose than four hours of thrills and chills.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 17
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Mixed: 4 out of 17
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Negative: 1 out of 17
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Feb 7, 2022
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Nov 20, 2021Read the book after watching this documentary bare in mind it’s very graphic and shocking. RIP victims
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Feb 24, 2021