Wormwood

A masterful, thought-provoking six-part documentary series from Errol Morris. And it’s a riveting cold case.

On a purely narrative level, Wormwood is consistently gripping and eye-opening, but what truly elevates it to the realm of greatness is Morris’ boundary-pushing storytelling approach. ... Redefining what a documentary can do and be.

The filmmaking gathers all the bits and pieces of the story together and arranges them in ways that are clever, surprising, and so aggressively (and deliberately) self-conscious that there are times when the whole thing gets close to turning into an intellectualized formal exercise. There are times when you might question whether six hours was necessary to tell this particular story--I often wonder that about Netflix productions--but there’s never a moment where Olson or Morris fail to fascinate.

Wormwood is not merely a Greatest Hits; it’s a fascinating piece of filmmaking that challenges the form in new ways as it recalls themes its director has been interested in his entire career.

Arguably, there are too many dramatizations, involving too much deliberate repetition. Wormwood could perhaps have been three hours long rather than four. But the overall conception, conflating investigation and imagination, works like a charm.

With Wormwood, he [Errol Morris] never promises to wrap up the mystery of Frank Olson’s death in a neat little package. It’s a son’s journey to find closure that makes this absorbing, if not slightly paranoid, series worth your time.

As the vice tightens through the elder Olson’s death and the aftermath, both the narrative drama and, even more, the story of the survivors’ quest for the truth accelerate, making the power of Morris’ distinctive approach fully felt; having come this far, it will be hard for viewers to pull themselves away during the second half of this epic.

It plays out like a dare--go with Morris’ fractured approach and you’ll find a remarkable, protracted psychological profile; binge it in the hopes of a more coherent payoff and you’re in for a mighty letdown. Either way, Wormwood manages to channel the most poignant themes at the root of Morris’ work.

In terms of scale and narrative ingenuity, Wormwood is as staggering as any Morris film--pure heroin for the conspiracy buffs who binged on Netflix's Making of a Murderer--though one wishes that the filmmaker was less fancy.

A mildly intriguing if somewhat overwrought docu-series for Netflix

If it were a two-hour film, Wormwood might be a brilliant, uneasy dive into dark CIA history, and its long-term ramifications for family members whose loved ones were sacrificed for the nebulous cause of “national security.” Running twice that long, it loses all energy and dramatic propulsion. Still, Morris makes a persuasive case that there’s sinister stuff to be unraveled here.