Some Kind of Monster

Film: Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

Based on the films on The List, it would be easy to decide that documentarian Nick Broomfield is something of a vulture. Both of his List films deal with the capture, trial, and execution of American serial killer Aileen Wuornos. This film, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, picks up 10 years after his first Wuornos documentary, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. Where the first film covered her bizarre trial, the latter film concerns the 18 months or so before her eventual execution, including the last of her appeals. While there is some crossover from the first film, almost all of this is new material.

There’s not a lot to talk about here in terms of story, because this is not a scripted story. Or is it? This is a concept that is touched on in the middle of the film when Broomfield himself takes the stand in a case. This legal case concerned Wuornos’s first trial, which her new lawyer wanted thrown out. Part of the testimony included admissions from her first lawyer that he smoked a vast amount of marijuana before meetings with her. The opposing lawyer brings up footage from the first film, showing that the lawyer in question was wearing two different shirts, indicating an edit and the possibility that the two clips were from different days.