Our true-crime obsessed critic is seriously shook.
Netflix has invested big in true crime. The streaming service not only boasts such popular documentaries as Making a Murderer, The Keepers, and Amanda Knox, but also gripping drama series based on real crimes, like The Watcher, When They See Us, and Mindhunter. So, it seemed a natural fit for Netflix to resurrect Unsolved Mysteries in 2020, even if it meant a radical reimagining.
While the series continues to cover everything from suspicious deaths to missing persons cases to paranormal activity, the rebooted Unsolved Mysteries ditched the anthology format. Instead of a series of segments about various mysteries, each episode focuses on one case. Gone too is the ominous yet resolute voiceover of the late Robert Stack, and it is sorely missed. Rewatching the episodes of the classic series, you can see how even the grimmest cases offered a moment of hope. As the segment concluded, you'd hold your breath waiting for Stack's husky timber to say firmly: "Update." Then, a racing synth score would play, laying out how the case has moved forward or even been solved.
With Stack having passed over 20 years ago, this wouldn't be the case even if Netflix's version solved the mysteries. (While Netflix's relaunch has led to some updates, they are typically announced over social media.) Still, never have I yearned for Stack's gruff but urgent "Update" more than at the conclusion of Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4, episode 2, "Body in the Basement."
Before you dive into Netflix's latest offering of true crime tales, take this as a warning: Do not watch this alone.
Volume 1 began with this unsettling subset of Unsolved Mysteries, focusing on the bizarre demise of Rey Rivera, a beloved husband who raced out the door in flip-flops never to come home. He'd be found days later, fallen through the broken roof of a historic high-rise hotel. But the police's insistence that it was suicide didn't satisfy family and friends who pointed to various clues that just didn't add up. Did he fall or was he pushed? A similar and similarly troubling question arises in the fourth, and latest, volume of the series, with "Body in the Basement."
Directed by Gabe Torres, the second episode of Volume 4 begins like many a true-crime documentary, with the playing of a frantic 911 call. "There's so much blood." weeps the caller, Lee Antoni, who is detailing the scene he came home to after a weekend away from his wife, Amanda. Interviews with her brothers will set up who she was through warm memories and family photos. Then, they begin to paint a picture of Lee.
As her spouse, he's naturally the police's first suspect after she's found dead in the basement of their house. But swiftly, the police and this episode move on from Lee as a suspect and instead regard him as a resource, as it seems he was on the phone with her when disaster struck. What made their pet Labrador, Ruby, bark in apparent alarm? Why did Amanda's call get abruptly cut off?
Was it a break-in? A murder? An accident? These are the possibilities that still haunt Amanda's loved ones. What forensics offer is that Amanda's head was cut open, causing her to bleed profusely and fatally as, over hours, she walked around the basement but didn't leave to seek aid. Her bare footsteps in the blood tell us this much. But how did her head come to be cut? Why didn't she leave the basement? And why — over the day and half that she was in the basement before discovery — did neither her dog or cat come down, disturbing the blood with their paw prints?
As a detective stands at the base of the stairs where Amanda's blood footprints stopped, the audience is left to wonder about these questions with no promise of resolution. Worse yet, we're left to wonder what to even root for, as all possibilities are bone-chilling.
I watch a lot of true crime, both for work and because I can't stop. "Body in the Basement" was the episode I turned on before my work day began. But it stopped me cold. I was unfit for morning chitchat. Coffee couldn't shake the shivers from my legs. Even now, thinking back on Amanda's story, my eyes sting, threatening tears, and my legs are covered in goosebumps. This episode didn't show footage of her remains at the scene. But it did show the blood, so much blood, that surrounded where her body laid before being removed by police. Worse still, it showed those footprints that sketch a story we cannot (yet?) understand.
I can't wrench loose the vivid image in my head of Amanda walking around her basement, bleeding, her loyal Labrador just up the stairs with no door to separate them, yet keeping her distance. What were those hours like for Amanda? And do I really want to know? All the speculation I can offer is fueled by fear, and none of it gives me solace.
Volume 4 delves into five new mysteries, among them a summary of the crimes of Jack the Ripper; the cold case of Sigrid Stevenson, who was murdered on the college stage on which she loved to perform; the curious incident of an embalmed head being found in Pennsylvania; and a look into the American cryptid most beloved by internet culture, the Mothman.
These stories are in turn shocking, sad, and maybe even at times outrageous. (The expert who points to the blue heron as a possible cause for Mothman hysteria is pretty amusing in his barely restrained cynicism about the cryptid's existence.) Yet nothing hits as hard as the mystery of Amanda Antoni. It's been days since I first learned her story, saw her home, heard her brothers' praise and saw her husband's tears. And I wish I had something profound to say about her or their loss. I wish I had something to offer beyond a warning.
Some true crime stories serve as cautionary tales. Some sing of justice, however long delayed. Some warn of the fatal flaws in our society. Some will break your heart to pieces. And some scar your psyche, cutting deep to the very root of fear and existential dread. "Body in the Basement" is the last two.
So brace yourself before hitting play. If you dare at all.
