Village of the Damned

The subject matter of this documentary is totally warranted, I will say that right away. The first crime is horrific; actual horror-movie-level stuff and so is the last, but the crimes in the middle can all be explained away by post-partum psychosis or untreated schizophrenia, so I really had to stick with it about half way through since I started to feel like they were grasping at straws just to make a lurid case for this village being cursed ...but at the end, the viewer certainly feels impressed about the sheer mathematical odds of all of these things happening to such a small group of people within a decade.

HOWEVER, the makers of this film could have done a MUCH better job with details - if only they had emphasized in real numbers how small the population was, and how ridiculously eerily tiny the high school attendance in the 1990s (where many of the deaths lead back to in some shape or form). Just simply stating statistical facts alone would have made this documentary that much more believable and eerie.

That's not all. There are a bunch of unnecessary scenes of an unrelated town waitress giving her running commentary on each crime though she does not appear to have anything to do with any of the incidents, other than living in Dryden her entire life. The time wasted on that and some other manipulative, tear-jerking content should have been replaced with more details about the murder of Coach Starr and the rape and torture of the two cheerleaders. Even after watching hours of this show, you have to Google the crimes to get a more comprehensive view of what really happened from an archived 2001 news article.