Netflix’s melodramatic Elisa Lam docuseries fails to deliver a point until the last episode
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is a new Netflix docuseries that covers the accidental death of Elisa Lam, a University of British Columbia (UBC) student from Vancouver, who was initially reported missing back in February 2013 before her body was discovered weeks later. The series features re-enactments and interviews with police, hotel staff, internet sleuths, and the victim of an online crusade.
The documentary turns the tragic death of a mentally ill woman into a spectacle — a guessing game split into four one-hour episodes that easily could have been condensed into a two-hour time frame. The documentary features two central subjects: Elisa Lam, the victim of an accidental drowning, and the Cecil Hotel, which once harboured guests such as Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, and Jack Unterweger, another serial killer.
Part of what sensationalized the disappearance of Elisa Lam was the release of security footage that recorded Lam riding one of the elevators. In the two-minute video — which had been edited before its public release — Lam is seen pressing all of the buttons, running in and out of the elevator, and pressing herself up against the corner, as if to hide from someone on the other side. This unsettling footage inspired an array of armchair detectives, or internet sleuths, to speculate about what could be causing her erratic behaviour. Many theories have been discussed online with connection to the case, including those about supernatural entities, serial killers, and even the possibility that Lam was an agent conspiring with UBC to release a strain of tuberculosis in Los Angeles. It’s an interesting inclusion that begs the question: why feature conspiracy theorists in the documentary to begin with?
Unlike one of Netflix’s most shocking documentaries, Don’t F**k with Cats, the internet sleuths offer nothing substantial outside of their own obsession into Lam’s life and how they picked apart her blog, jumping from one theory to another. They didn’t have an impactful role in the investigation outside of spreading awareness of her disappearance, theorizing about what happened, and scrutinizing her Tumblr. While hotel workers, detectives, and the online sleuths are strangers reacting to why her death was so impactful to them, no one from Lam’s life is featured in an interview. No one who knew her personally discusses why she mattered or who she was, which only adds to the sensationalized aspect of the series.
The final episode of the four-part series really highlights what little material the crew had to work with, as they bring to light the death metal singer Pablo “Morbid” Vergara, who was mistakenly targeted online as a possible suspect in Lam’s death, despite records indicating that he stayed at the Cecil Hotel an entire year prior to her disappearance. The harassment from online sleuths caused him to attempt suicide, and it’s not until the end of the entire series that the absurd theories are laid to rest and the filmmakers conclude that he had no part in her disappearance. True crime media has a tendency to sensationalize murder with little regard for the victim, and while the filmmakers tried to demonstrate how much the police and internet sleuths were dedicated to finding her, the series spends far too much time giving a platform to wild conspiracy theories.
Ultimately, Lam’s death was ruled an accidental drowning ?— no evidence suggested she had been murdered or even intended to kill herself, though her bipolar disorder was believed to be a contributing factor in her death.
The docuseries unintentionally highlights how tedious and traumatizing true crime can be, where victims are stripped of their humanity and broken down into identifiable labels: mother, daughter, or student. Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel aired nearly eight years after the unfortunate death of Elisa Lam and manages to offer no valuable insight and no more information than you could get from skimming the Wikipedia page. You may have made the joke “If I ever die, please delete my browsing history,” but I think I’m more concerned with making sure all of my social media accounts are wiped clean before internet sleuths like those obsessed with Elisa Lam can make mine into a source of public spectacle.
