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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
34
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Feb 5, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The Jinx does channel that we're-all-on-this-ride-together thrill that hooked so many listeners of last fall's NPR podcast, "Serial," about a murder of a Maryland teen. This may be a high-gloss treatment that utilizes all the tricks of the TV trade, including dramatic re-creations, and a way-over-baked credit sequence, but that sense of unfolding discovery remains.
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Apr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
The material may not be as absorbing as that of the original, but the editing still gives it a pace and style that could be called rigorously hypnotic. With HBO having held back two episodes (in 2015 it held back four), there is the chance that Part Two will supply a surprise of the magnitude of Durst’s seeming confession, though it’s hard to see how. .... In any case, it seems almost certain that we will be back here in six weeks, talking about “The Jinx.”
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Apr 19, 2024
Season 2 Review:
The Jinx puts to the test the question, “Would it TRULY have been enough if The Jinx were just an exceptionally well-produced true crime docuseries?” Because that, so far, is what the second season is. There are plenty of very good interviews, and the case zigs and zags with an engaging sense of mounting unease. Plus there’s a lot of Robert Durst, just mostly in jailhouse conversations from prison. But it isn’t quite the same.
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Apr 18, 2024
Season 2 Review:
With smart use of archival and present-day footage and interviews with people involved replacing the role of Durst himself, The Jinx — Part Two skillfully expands itself to cover even more shocking revelations until we have a map to the full scope of Durst’s crimes and their aftermath at our fingertips.
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RogerEbert.comApr 18, 2024
Mar 26, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The Jinx is wickedly entertaining: funny, morbid, and sad, at once exploitative and high-minded, a moral lasagna of questionable aesthetic choices (including reconstructions of ghastly events) and riveting interviews (of Durst, but also of other eccentrics, like his chain-smoking-hot second wife).
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Feb 10, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The Jinx can be a tad too self-referential at times, and unlike the hot-blooded thrill of the podcast “Serial,” this is a story whose particulars can all be found—albeit presented far less well—on Wikipedia. But it’s absorbing, due to the exhaustive research underpinning it and the hook of Durst’s actual, shiftless presence.
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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
This documentary, which promises to twist and turn a bit with each new episode, is one of those macabre sagas that once again proves that truth is stranger than fiction. The most haunting part of The Jinx, though, is Durst himself and his ice-cold eyes. They’ll send chills right up your spine.
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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The filmmakers grant Durst his humanity, allowing us to see the charm, and occasional flashes of humor, that animate the man when he sometimes emerges from the fog of good fortune. In the two episodes I’ve seen, The Jinx makes good, sparing use of dramatizing some of the moments Durst describes.
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Apr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
When you set expectations as high as Jarecki did in 2015, you can only expect the final product to be dissected. "Jinx: Part 2" is still miles above your average murder doc. It's still surprising. It's still emotional. It's still nearly impossible to stop watching once you start.
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Apr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
While almost nothing could match that moment [of saying "killed them all, of course"], Jarecki does what he can, including footage of interesting parties watching a screening of the final episode of “The Jinx” at his home in 2015, capturing their jaws-agape responses. He also has access to authorities interviewing Durst and others, as well as Durst’s jailhouse calls to friends, most of whom appeared to be unsettlingly on board with trying to help him evade punishment.
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Apr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Jarecki certainly knows how to create drama, and “The Jinx Part Two” continues to provide good entertainment though it remains to be seen if it will again end with a bombshell. Regardless, the series offers examples of smart, pointed lawyering by prosecutors and Durst’s defense team.
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Apr 17, 2024
Season 2 Review:
It leans into prosecution dramedy less reliant on new bombshell evidence and humanizes the friends and lovers Durst endeared without assuaging their guilt. (An episode centered on Berman is the strongest of the four provided for review.) But the show doesn’t ameliorate the ineffectiveness writ large of true crime at this moment.
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SlashfilmApr 15, 2024
Season 2 Review:
"The Jinx Part Two" narrows its focus and essentially becomes a beat-by-beat breakdown of Lewin and his team trying to establish a watertight case against Durst. The show is still mesmerizing, but with its primary subject in prison, it's lost a little of the "anything can happen" juice of the original batch of episodes.
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Feb 5, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Some may criticize Jarecki’s rigidly amoral documentary style, but even if he and co-producer Smerling don’t skew their filmmaking to underscore the guilt of their subjects, the facts, as they say, speak for themselves. When the facts are as extraordinary as they are in The Jinx, it’s impossible not to listen.
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Apr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
A diversion for TV completists. .... Those put off by the questionable edits and creative license taken in the first six installments will find ample material to take issue with this time around as well. The media critic side of me wants to chastise Jarecki for prioritizing entertainment value over strictly ordered journalism. But the murder mystery addict in me appreciates the simple thrills offered in this continuation.
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iApr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
As a piece of entertainment, the new series works almost as well as its predecessor: Jarecki and his team pace the new interviews nicely with a visual blend of mute re-enactment and close-up shots of voice recorders, ensuring every episode ends with a compelling prompt to keep watching. But their packaging and tonal decisions sometimes strike a bum note.
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Feb 10, 2015
Apr 22, 2024
Season 2 Review:
With the primary objective of getting Durst behind bars already achieved, The Jinx Part Two is even more at pains than the first to stretch its length to six episodes, and now that it’s no longer a story about a nutty eccentric who might be a killer but a man we’re convinced is a serial murderer, the diversions into amusing side material feel even more like filler.
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