Wormwood

:

Season 1
  • Network: Netflix
  • Series Premiere Date: Dec 15, 2017
User Score
5.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 57 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 57
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 57
  3. Negative: 23 out of 57
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User Reviews

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  1. EludiumQ36
    Dec 30, 2017
    2
    I was hoping this was going to be a slightly fictionalized, fast-paced dramatization, but no, it's a boring - sorry - documentary that plays out in the '50s and '70s, ugh. Like many books you read, there's just way too much spurious, expository detail included. For me - please get to the point. As such I didn't even make it through ep 1. But see, everyone, EVERYONE knows by now that theI was hoping this was going to be a slightly fictionalized, fast-paced dramatization, but no, it's a boring - sorry - documentary that plays out in the '50s and '70s, ugh. Like many books you read, there's just way too much spurious, expository detail included. For me - please get to the point. As such I didn't even make it through ep 1. But see, everyone, EVERYONE knows by now that the federal govt is all about abuse of power instead of governing, that's why there is scandal after scandal after scandal. Now in the early '70s we as a people weren't so jaded yet. But since then we've seen horrible abuses by the DoD, EPA, FBI, CIA, and NSA, as well as the Office of the President with Nixon's Watergate, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton. So when "Wormwood" is revealing that the CIA did this horrible thing, my response is "tell me something I don't know." It's par for the course. Another decade, another scandal that's made public. Netflix shouldn't have commissioned this, it clearly should've been a PBS documentary.… Expand
  2. Prosmooth
    Dec 19, 2017
    10
    It will be awhile before I forget the closing monologue from the son who has wasted his life trying to prove that the CIA murdered his father. How very, very sad.
  3. alejandro970
    Jan 14, 2018
    9
    Conspiracy theory fake documentary about the accumulation of lies and murder that involves CIA all along the Cold War. It´s ressemblance to real life is surprising.
  4. arkcentralhq
    Feb 12, 2018
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Something Rotten in the state of Wormwood.
    Six hours later I am left with Macbeth's assessment " full of sound and fury but signifying Nothing!"
    Morris' foray into true crime fails at the most elemental level NO HARD EVIDENCE! Only endless repetition of home movies, excruciating Hamlet monologues, stylised Hollywood Cold War recreations.
    Too long for SO LITTLE.
    SIX EPISODES move from a study of a Father's death to become the twisted torment of an obsessive son who is Hamlet reborn... overreaching metaphor. Remember Me becomes his epitaph and eulogy.
    Morris's visual techniques are at first intriguing and inventive but without plot movement become stale and repetitive to an irritating degree, collages, multiple angles, split screens all hammering the same dull point. These become soporific and you may be excused for dropping into a comatose state.
    Disappointingly the great real life story is submerged in the paranoia and whining expose of Eric Olsen's clear line of deductions from only circumstantial conspiracy scenarios that smack of a Hollywood script from the Cold War and are validated by Morris' gratuitous recreation of Murder by CIA Most Foul! Scenes that have no valid evidence. They are played out Documentary truth when all they ever can be are supposition and joining dots that are so far apart in time they seem plausible. Especially in the claustrophobic mind of this fanatical son who sits in a bare room with a clock that never moves from 2.37 am. Symbolism abounds but it is not conclusive hard evidence. It does capture the tragic waste of a life which has been locked into 1953 and imprisoned in an endless maze of lies, cover ups and colliding theories.
    Ultimately Eric finds a first class expose Journo who makes a conversion to Eric's now Religious Belief in A Conspiracy at the highest level from a deep throat informer BUT his hands are tied. You just want to scream at this arrogant grandstanding journalist "Stop hijacking this story and find your own plot to bastardise!" Utterly Dishonest Documentary style right here. "I may be able to tell the whole story one day" just adds fuel to the sense that we as an audience have been led by the nose to absolutely NOWHERE JUST BY THE VISUAL TRICKERY OF VIRTUAL SCREEN REALITY.
    I had that wholly unsatisfying feeling of empty promises and certainly no closure that came after all those long hours of SERIAL, imbibing every detail on the way to EREHWON. (USE A MIRROR)    … Expand
  5. geewah
    Jan 15, 2021
    6
    Would of been better as a feature length rather than a docu-series. Interesting enough.

Awards & Rankings

25
#25 Best TV Season of 2017
34
#34 Most Shared TV Season of 2017

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
82

Universal acclaim - based on 13 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 13
  3. Negative: 1 out of 13
  1. Reason.com
    Reviewed by: Glenn Garvin
    Jan 26, 2018
    35
    Wormwood, ultimately, is a wildly overblown embarrassment to Morris' reputation.
    Read full review
  2. The Atlantic
    Reviewed by: Sophie Gilbert
    Dec 18, 2017
    50
    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.
    Read full review
  3. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Matt Zoller Seitz
    Dec 15, 2017
    90
    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.
    Read full review
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