User reviews

One episode would have been enough.

A 14 year old boy who without compassion, empathy, care or regret murdered his mother, father and two sisters shooting them at point blank range. He later re-enacts what he did with the same gun to police, standing at the same spot and showing them how he shot the gun into their heads.

The archival footage is interesting, but you don't learn anything other than what happened with interviews from the boy's defence attorney who clearly enjoys telling the interviewer "I know something you don't know, but I'm not going to tell you" - what a load of nonsense. He would be better off having a bath/shower, then shaving or trimming his beard.

An interesting case which starts to become dull.

A wild story, no doubt. If it had just stuck to facts that would have been one thing. But they tried to be investigative, but didn't get a single thing out of anyone. Good use of archival footage, but could have been shorter, the defense attorney said nothing useful and instead wasted our time and the documenters'.

Kept showing the same scenes over and over again , and to this day no one knows the motive. A horrific crime like the one committed should have been far more compelling, instead it became boring .

The premise of "The Motive" is intriguing enough to warrant a documentary. A fourteen year old boy kills his parents and two sisters, shows no remorse and never provides a justification. The 'no remorse' aspect can be attributed to a mental disorder. However the roughly two hours of episodes never provides an answer as to why he did it. The frustrating attitude of defense lawyer Yossi Arnon of "I know but I'll never tell" just gets played out for far too long. And having to watch close up shots of his old man gecko-like tongue flicking in and out of his mouth was unpleasant. Watching four episodes and never hearing the name of the central figure was confusing at first. I had to search online for why that was. The identity of minors must has been protected by law in Israel. That's fine but it's never mentioned in the docu-series. So you are left wondering why his name is never mentioned and yet he's shown throughout in news footage and home movies. Only until the end credits roll do you realize that it was all re-enactments. Re-enactments in documentaries are now common place but they usually are so stylized that you know what they are without needing to be told. But with 'The Motive' I felt very confused as to what was real and what was a re-enactment. I can only be sure that the interviews were real.

A boy is killing his family, OK, I got that. I don't even care about the reason, the motive, but they say nothing about family, the sisters, the mother, they say a bit about the father and that's all. It's all about this person who did a terrible crime. A psychopath, most probably. I even found the Police investigation, crash, bang, boom.

Nothing on Google about it which is very strange, like it never existed.

2 stars.

Ah, and that music is annoying, not saying about playing same images over and over again, they could do this documentary in one hour.

This documentary could have been done in 45 minutes but its stretched out to nearly 2+ hours into repeating nothingness. The footage is confusing and the interviewed people irritating particulary the defense lawyer who was as useful to the programme as a chcolate teapot.

I just saw this documentary. It is very well made with a lot of real footage from the crimes.

The story is simple. A 14 years old boy kills his parents and his 2 sisters. He confesses the crime but not the motive.

In my opinion, after having seen dozens of documentaries with killers, he is just a psychopath. My theory is backed up by policemen, doctors, people who knew the boy after the murders and all of them said that he showed no remorse. No tears, nothing.

We are normal human beings and it is in our nature to find motives, reasons behind any action. But for a psychopath you don't necessarily need a reason to kill someone. I really think the boy killed his parents and sisters because he wanted to and could. Just simple as that.

Go see this documentary if you like true crime stories.

Like many other docuseries, they show things over and over, talk to people who aren't really relevant, try to make it a dramatic movie instead of just having it be what it is on its own. Could have been a 90 minute documentary. But still interesting.

The biggest issue I have with this docuseries is the interview process - or at least what's visible to us. The questions are closed-ended or loaded with preconceptions or not provocative enough. It's like just seeking confirmation for whatever the interviewees had planned to say. A good interviewer should be both provocative and able to put people at ease so that interviewees would reveal more of what they're thinking/feeling (there are a few brief moments in which they managed to do that, but the rest of the interview is just a disappointment).

Also, they should always press for something more concrete from the interviewees, especially those considered to be experts or authorities - there's a lot of flowery language and swelling emotions, but not much substance. Like the lawyer who thinks he knew the motive, sure, but maybe wonder why his opinion holds any weight as he's not a psychiatrist? Or how he drew his conclusions? Or the psychiatrist, who admitted we have better understanding of mental states now than before, sure, what are the developments? What are the studies, terminologies, examples, etc? What are the philosophies on children crimes, mental health, family dynamics, military, gun control, Israeli state at that time, etc?

For me, there are two possible reasons why he could've committed such heinous crimes - one influenced by external forces, and the other internal. External forces could be: abuses sustained by him or any of his family members (little evidence of that), delirium caused by rage or any extreme emotion (not found), or brain tumours (for example, see Charles Whitman; even though this is internal of the murderer, it's out of his control, hence can be considered as external, this isn't mentioned in the show).

Then, there are the potential internal forces: narcissism, psychopathy, etc. One might find it hard to imagine, but you're never in the head of a psychopath, the problem isn't that they think about doing evil things all the time, it's that evil deeds don't bother them because they're not emotionally affected by it. And one always seeks for outward traits of devil (as suggested by many authorities in the show), as if there's a stereotypical face caused by psychopathy. What are you looking for, a "666" tattoo? For instance, Chris Watts, who murdered his wife and daughters simply because he wanted to leave them behind and start a new life with another woman, he could also be thought as just a regular Joe. You would think the means are way too extreme for the ends, but that's not how they see it. One of my theories is that the murderer actually felt suffocated by the attention and affection that he's showered with, and could be feeling like everyone's baby, which he despised (the journalist - if she could be trusted - mentioned something along the lines that he felt that he could only be a real grown up without his family).

Lastly, there are the technical parts... first, why is it cut into 4 short episodes? Is it necessary? Or it makes the blatant repetitions of images and sentiments less egregious? Then the narrative, music... are all quite hackneyed. They aren't bad, just a little pedestrian for such a compelling story. The show seems like just a cool presentation of what people can already guess/know, they should ask more probing questions, shine light on more perspectives (with real studies to back it up). As it stands, it seems more like a he-said-she-said gossip story.

The worst crime doc I've ever seen.

Looks like it was a student film. No point to this clunker, you learn nothing about "The Motive".

It should have been called "No Motive"

I don't know if enjoyed is the right phrase. But I watched all episodes pretty quickly. It's just a sad sad story. But if the gun wasn't there the crime probably wouldn't have happened. We should all learn that sad fact. Why would you show a 13 year old boy a gun let alone a AK! What were those people thinking? That should be the bigger ask?

A poorly conceived, shot, edited, and presented piece about a teenager who kills his family without apparent motive. As many reviewers here opined, the kid is a remorseless psychopath protected by a sleazy defense lawyer. There is no mystery here. Move on...there's nothing to see here.

The case seems to be very interesting, this documentary isn't. Nothing missed if skipped.

There is one minute of interview and one minute of old photos and filmed scenes. Some of these scenes are not even real but staged. This alternation between information and footage continues for 4 ours. And even some of the interviews could be skipped completely and it wouldn't change the documentary to the bad.

'Investigative' journalists who don't know how to ask questions. A teenager could do better. Some of the interviews are like this (seriously like this): Interviewee: 'I know some details' Journalist: 'but you want tell me?' Interviewee: 'no' ... 5 seconds slience Journalist: 'if you tell me, would i understand more?' Interviewee: 'yes' ... 10 seconds silence Journalist: 'wow' ... cut WTF was this?!?!

I have a very strong feeling that this a giant leg-pull, i.e. It's a fiction dressed up as a true crime documentary. It really had me going until I began thinking about it. Hence the 10 stars. It's up there with Orson Wells' Martian invasion. Give it another look and see if it doesn't fit together far more plausibly.

A psychopath killing his whole family is being idealized just because he's brilliant. He is presented as the victim and a hero. Not a single respect is paid to those who lost their life. Point is there is no motive cause boy is just a psychopath who had urges to killed. And to the producers, please do anything else but stop making docuseries please. It was very bad.