Netflix continues to produce series and movies about terrorism. After series like Manhunt Unabomber or Bodyguard, it is the turn of Terrorism Close Calls to be broadcast on the streaming site.
For this docu-series, we leave the fictional sphere to enter reality. The ten episodes tell of terrorist attacks that were foiled by the authorities. All the stories are independent of each other and have no chronological link, which makes it sometimes difficult to understand because it is complicated to situate oneself in time.
Each episode is composed in relatively the same way. On finds a description of the investigation by FBI agents. They spend much of the episode describing the background and history of the terrorists. The second part of the episode is devoted to the methods used to solve the investigation.
Domestic terrorism set aside
The series loses its interest when we meet that all the episodes are similar. More than half of the stories are devoted to attempts by al-Qaeda and thus Islamist extremism. There are no real varieties in the cases treated and all the episodes end up looking the same, because they are told in the same way.
Terrorism Close Calls locks itself into clichés with poorly made illustration images or reused in almost every episode. The editing is also composed of transitions with a " glitch effect", used excessively, which makes it difficult to appreciate the documentary.
One gets the impression that from the beginning the goal is to scare with a terrifying voice-over, images with a lot of explosion, as well as constant references to September 11, 2001 and the Boston bombing. FBI experts spend their time using very complicated words, without explanation. The sequence of the episodes follows a strange pattern and each story gets to the heart of the matter, without any real introduction.
A dramatization that spoils the documentary
The documentary loses its objectivity when we see that it is the highlighting of sensationalism that counts, rather than facts and pure narrative. We have to wait until the 6th episode to see a story about white supremacists and an attempted attack during Martin Luther King Day. Unfortunately, it will be the only one to bring a little variety, because all the others are reserved for al-Qaeda.
The series chooses international terrorism as its angle and almost completely evacuates domestic terrorism, as if it did not exist. We immediately move into a more subjective vision, because the whole subject is not treated equally. The production is even scattered by focusing on cases in Australia, Germany or England while at the base, it focuses on the United States.
The problem with this series is that the episodes remain on the surface and the director does not seem to want to deepen his subject to make a real documentary that debates a problem. The only purpose here is the dramatization and highlighting of survey participants. This aspect pushes the series into a very exaggerated nationalism that makes the episodes even heavier to watch. It almost comes to see a parody of a secret agent movie rather than a report on terrorism.
Netflix shows here a rather negative image of the sensationalist documentary and exaggerates all the clichés. The video service has been able to produce much better series-docus like Making a Murderer, The Keepers or The Confession Tapes. Terrorism Close Calls is totally different from it by its lack of depth and its choice of dramatization. With the amount of documentaries available on Netflix, this one is clearly not one of the must-haves.
