Wisconsin Death Trip
I've spent quite a bit of time in all different parts of Wisconsin over the last year and a half or so with my girlfriend who is from there. I've fallen in love with the state. So we were interested in checking out this documentary.
This is one of those "reenactment" type of documentaries which sometimes I don't know if I should really classify them as documentaries. Based on articles from a Black River Falls, WI newspaper, the stories are very interesting, but makes the film highly scattered and fragmentary. And the argument that something unusual must have been going on in Black River Falls at that time doesn't hold because many of the stories turn out to be occurrences from all over the state and over such a long span of time. I'm sure you could find just as many strange and morbid stories from the same span of time in any other state or at any other newspaper from that time as well.
Also strangely the film is narrated by Ian Holm. He's British. Why did they pick a British man to narrate this Wisconsin documentary? But he actually does an American accent. They should have got someone with a Wisconsin accent though!
Just because the stories don't indicate that the locale might not be quite as phenomenal are argued, they are still somewhat intriguing. An amusing curiosity, but not necessarily recommended.
Rating: 6/10