There are few things more terrifying than the idea of a home invasion, especially one that ends in violence. So when reports first broke of a 2010 home invasion in the relatively sleepy Toronto suburb of Marham, Ontario that left one person dead and one in a coma, people were understandably shaken. Police, however, had reason to doubt the story told to them by the victims' daughter, 24-year-old Jennifer Pan, who was left allegedly restrained but unhurt and was able to call police. As the details of that tragic November evening began to emerge, the world learned that Pan had potentially orchestrated the entire event and hired the "home invaders" to kill her parents. In 2015, Pan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years for the murder of her mother and the attempted murder of her father, with similar sentences for her accomplices as well.
There...
There...
- 4/21/2024
- by Danielle Ryan
- Slash Film
This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s What Jennifer Did.
The true crime documentary business stays booming. Long a mainstay of both network and cable television, true crime documentary films and docuseries have increasingly gained a foothold in the streaming world as well.
Premier streamer Netflix has been particularly fond of the engaging (and inexpensive) format, churning out many new true crime efforts each month. At first glance, Netflix’s latest doc, What Jennifer Did, is your standard fare.
The 90-minute documentary from director Jenny Popplewell recounts the chilling real life case of Jennifer Pan. On Nov. 8, 2010, Jennifer called 9-1-1 to report that three masked men had invaded her family’s Markham, Ontario home and shot her dad Huei Hann Pan and her mom Bich Ha Pan as part of a botched robbery. Bich ultimately died from her injuries while Hann narrowly survived after a lengthy coma.
When investigating the crime,...
The true crime documentary business stays booming. Long a mainstay of both network and cable television, true crime documentary films and docuseries have increasingly gained a foothold in the streaming world as well.
Premier streamer Netflix has been particularly fond of the engaging (and inexpensive) format, churning out many new true crime efforts each month. At first glance, Netflix’s latest doc, What Jennifer Did, is your standard fare.
The 90-minute documentary from director Jenny Popplewell recounts the chilling real life case of Jennifer Pan. On Nov. 8, 2010, Jennifer called 9-1-1 to report that three masked men had invaded her family’s Markham, Ontario home and shot her dad Huei Hann Pan and her mom Bich Ha Pan as part of a botched robbery. Bich ultimately died from her injuries while Hann narrowly survived after a lengthy coma.
When investigating the crime,...
- 4/19/2024
- by Alec Bojalad
- Den of Geek
Netflix true crime documentary What Jennifer Did, about a murder case in 2010, appears to use AI to generate images of the convicted killer at its centre.
An otherwise typical Netflix true crime documentary has sparked controversy over its alleged use of AI to generate images of its subject.
Released on the 10th April, What Jennifer Did relates the grim case of Jennifer Pan, a Canadian woman who was eventually convicted for her involvement in the deaths of her parents. Directed by Jenny Popplewell, the documentary uses interviews with the law enforcers involved in the case, news footage, and clips of Pan herself being interrogated by officers.
More perplexingly, though, the 86-minute film also appears to have used AI to fake images of a younger, happier Pan before the crimes took place. These images are used prominently in both the trailer (which you can see below) and the documentary itself: in one,...
An otherwise typical Netflix true crime documentary has sparked controversy over its alleged use of AI to generate images of its subject.
Released on the 10th April, What Jennifer Did relates the grim case of Jennifer Pan, a Canadian woman who was eventually convicted for her involvement in the deaths of her parents. Directed by Jenny Popplewell, the documentary uses interviews with the law enforcers involved in the case, news footage, and clips of Pan herself being interrogated by officers.
More perplexingly, though, the 86-minute film also appears to have used AI to fake images of a younger, happier Pan before the crimes took place. These images are used prominently in both the trailer (which you can see below) and the documentary itself: in one,...
- 4/19/2024
- by Ryan Lambie
- Film Stories
The premiere week of Netflix’s “Ripley” elbowed “3 Body Problem” out of the No. 1 slot among streaming original series for the week of April 5-11, according to Luminate streaming ratings.
Among streaming original movies, “Scoop” managed a solid break for Netflix while Amazon Prime Video’s “Road House” hung tough in its third full week in release, as reported by Luminate in its weekly Top 10 Streaming Originals charts for series and movies.
“Ripley,” the much talked-about adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic fraudster saga “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” from Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian, debuted with about 670.1 million minutes watched across its eight episodes. That translates to about 1.5 million views.
A sleeper entrant at No. 2 was Netflix’s unscripted crime docu “Files of the Unexplained,” with 531.3 million minutes watched across eight episodes. The show’s audience grew 276% in its first full week in release after premiering on April 3.
Landing at No.
Among streaming original movies, “Scoop” managed a solid break for Netflix while Amazon Prime Video’s “Road House” hung tough in its third full week in release, as reported by Luminate in its weekly Top 10 Streaming Originals charts for series and movies.
“Ripley,” the much talked-about adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic fraudster saga “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” from Oscar-winning screenwriter Steve Zaillian, debuted with about 670.1 million minutes watched across its eight episodes. That translates to about 1.5 million views.
A sleeper entrant at No. 2 was Netflix’s unscripted crime docu “Files of the Unexplained,” with 531.3 million minutes watched across eight episodes. The show’s audience grew 276% in its first full week in release after premiering on April 3.
Landing at No.
- 4/13/2024
- by Cynthia Littleton
- Variety Film + TV
Netflix on Tuesday unveiled five filmmaking teams who will receive funding and professional support to make short documentaries on the theme of “Connection” in the second year of the global streamer’s U.K. Documentary Talent Fund.
The winners were selected from thousands of applications, with a shortlist of 12 teams invited to Netflix’s U.K. headquarters to pitch their projects in front of a panel of industry experts.
The five projects and filmmaking teams selected are:
Anna Snowball & Abolfazl Talooni – Iranian Yellow Pages.
Iranians in London, trapped between two cultures, search for connection by placing weird and wonderful adverts in the Iranian Yellow Pages.
Anna Rodgers & Zlata Filipovic – Two Mothers.
An unusual bond compels an Irish mother of twins to travel to war-torn Ukraine in order to rescue the woman who carried her babies.
Caroline Williamson & Troi Lee – Turn up the Bass.
This is the remarkable story of Troi...
The winners were selected from thousands of applications, with a shortlist of 12 teams invited to Netflix’s U.K. headquarters to pitch their projects in front of a panel of industry experts.
The five projects and filmmaking teams selected are:
Anna Snowball & Abolfazl Talooni – Iranian Yellow Pages.
Iranians in London, trapped between two cultures, search for connection by placing weird and wonderful adverts in the Iranian Yellow Pages.
Anna Rodgers & Zlata Filipovic – Two Mothers.
An unusual bond compels an Irish mother of twins to travel to war-torn Ukraine in order to rescue the woman who carried her babies.
Caroline Williamson & Troi Lee – Turn up the Bass.
This is the remarkable story of Troi...
- 6/13/2023
- by Georg Szalai
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Netflix has launched its second documentary talent fund for emerging filmmakers in the U.K. – and this year the streamer is extending applications to Ireland.
The fund will again be produced by Elisabeth Hopper with support from supervising producer Georgie Yukiko and assistant producer Daisy Ifama.
Open to everyone – even those with no experience – the fund provides filmmakers with a budget of £30,000 as well as guidance from Netflix executives and other industry professionals to enable them to make a documentary short. Among the support offered by Netflix is a series of production workshops covering legal, creative, Hr and finance, among other things.
The theme for this year’s documentaries is “connection.”
The chosen applicants will present their final documentaries at a showcase in early 2024. Applicants must be a resident of the U.K. or Ireland.
Each filmmaker will come away with an 8-10 minute documentary that will be pushed on Netflix U.
The fund will again be produced by Elisabeth Hopper with support from supervising producer Georgie Yukiko and assistant producer Daisy Ifama.
Open to everyone – even those with no experience – the fund provides filmmakers with a budget of £30,000 as well as guidance from Netflix executives and other industry professionals to enable them to make a documentary short. Among the support offered by Netflix is a series of production workshops covering legal, creative, Hr and finance, among other things.
The theme for this year’s documentaries is “connection.”
The chosen applicants will present their final documentaries at a showcase in early 2024. Applicants must be a resident of the U.K. or Ireland.
Each filmmaker will come away with an 8-10 minute documentary that will be pushed on Netflix U.
- 1/16/2023
- by K.J. Yossman
- Variety Film + TV
TNT’s “Rich & Shameless” seven-part film series will launch this summer, but the first installment, “The Crime Against Pam & Tommy,” is debuting this Saturday. And the sooner the better for director Jenny Popplewell, who wants the movie to “settle the truth” for Pamela Anderson about her sex tape with ex Tommy Lee, which Popplewell called “revenge porn before we knew it was revenge porn.”
“We reached out to Pamela Anderson right from the start and to Tommy and asked them if they’d like to be involved,” Popplewell said alongside “Rich & Shameless” showrunner and producer Tom Lindley during a Television Critics Association panel Monday. “And we heard back through their representatives that that’s just a period of their time that they’re not interested in looking at again. But there were people that we invited into the film who were very close to Pam and Tommy, who had been...
“We reached out to Pamela Anderson right from the start and to Tommy and asked them if they’d like to be involved,” Popplewell said alongside “Rich & Shameless” showrunner and producer Tom Lindley during a Television Critics Association panel Monday. “And we heard back through their representatives that that’s just a period of their time that they’re not interested in looking at again. But there were people that we invited into the film who were very close to Pam and Tommy, who had been...
- 2/14/2022
- by Jennifer Maas
- Variety Film + TV
Unlike most of the kids in his class, 16-year-old Jamie New knows what he wants to be when he grows up: a drag queen. And unlike most of the fabulous aspiring female impersonators who’ve strutted on-screen before him, he has surprisingly few obstacles in his way. Jamie has an understanding mom, a supportive best friend and a school full of closed-minded students who don’t take much to come around, which makes this glittery big-screen adaptation of 2017’s well-liked West End tuner an unusually festive affair. “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” is to queer teens what “High School Musical” was to, well, their more closeted peers: an upbeat, be-yourself pep rally for self-questioning young adult audiences.
Pre-pandemic, the feel-good musical was snapped up by Fox for big-screen release, where it would have followed in the footsteps of the studio’s “Love, Simon” — a second unapologetically gay, refreshingly nonjudgmental coming-out and...
Pre-pandemic, the feel-good musical was snapped up by Fox for big-screen release, where it would have followed in the footsteps of the studio’s “Love, Simon” — a second unapologetically gay, refreshingly nonjudgmental coming-out and...
- 8/30/2021
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Nature documentaries, true crime, even controversial stories of child-sexual abuse — they all need music, and this television season offered composers of varied backgrounds supplying outstanding scores.
“Really, you’re writing a concerto for dialogue,” says Michael Abels (“Get Out”), whose firstever doc assignment was the HBO series “Allen v. Farrow,” which outlined the case against Woody Allen, whose adopted daughter Dylan Farrow has accused the director of abusing her at age 7.
Most of the music in “Allen v. Farrow” supports the “reporting” segments. “Music helps us hear that part of the story, giving it momentum and direction,” says Abels, who enlisted a 40-member string ensemble to record and perform from Budapest.
The occasional clarinet solo, and ’30s- and ’40s-style big-band numbers, reminded viewers of Allen’s own musical tastes and Manhattan jazz-club performances.
The most sensitive material, however, went unscored. “When you see a little girl talking about what happened,...
“Really, you’re writing a concerto for dialogue,” says Michael Abels (“Get Out”), whose firstever doc assignment was the HBO series “Allen v. Farrow,” which outlined the case against Woody Allen, whose adopted daughter Dylan Farrow has accused the director of abusing her at age 7.
Most of the music in “Allen v. Farrow” supports the “reporting” segments. “Music helps us hear that part of the story, giving it momentum and direction,” says Abels, who enlisted a 40-member string ensemble to record and perform from Budapest.
The occasional clarinet solo, and ’30s- and ’40s-style big-band numbers, reminded viewers of Allen’s own musical tastes and Manhattan jazz-club performances.
The most sensitive material, however, went unscored. “When you see a little girl talking about what happened,...
- 6/2/2021
- by Jon Burlingame
- Variety Film + TV
The numbers told an exciting story: For the first time ever, five major tentpole feature films directed by women were set to be released in a single calendar year: Cate Shortland’s “Black Widow,” Chloé Zhao’s “Eternals,” “Cathy Yan’s “Birds of Prey,” Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman 1984,” and Niki Caro’s “Mulan.” The year 2020 was going to show real progress and provide a sign of different things to come, aided by a push for visibility that had so far alluded even the industry’s most well-known female filmmakers. The five films on the schedule — four of which were tied to the biggest active franchises of the moment — were only part of a bigger picture.
You know what happened next: a pandemic.
Its impact shut down whole countries and has claimed over a million lives to date. For the movies, the changes were swift and brutal: postponed and canceled projects,...
You know what happened next: a pandemic.
Its impact shut down whole countries and has claimed over a million lives to date. For the movies, the changes were swift and brutal: postponed and canceled projects,...
- 12/18/2020
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Let the best-of-the-year lists commence. While guilds and critics groups will soon be delivering their opinions, one of the few of genuine interest each year comes from a single person: the wonderfully eccentric director John Waters, whose eclectic tastes always includes a mix of the unexpected and underseen.
Topping his list this year is Tyler Cornack’s spring release Butt Boy, which features a strange tale of missing persons potentially disappearing up someone’s rectum, followed by the recommended psychological body horror film Swallow. Also among the list are the latest films from Pedro Almodóvar, Craig Zobel, Quentin Dupieux and, as a 10th place tie leading to 11 selections, new courtroom dramas by Steve McQueen and Aaron Sorkin.
Check out the list below via Baltimore Fishbowl, which will appear in the next issue of Artforum. We’ve also included links to our reviews.
1. Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack)
2. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)
3. The Hunt...
Topping his list this year is Tyler Cornack’s spring release Butt Boy, which features a strange tale of missing persons potentially disappearing up someone’s rectum, followed by the recommended psychological body horror film Swallow. Also among the list are the latest films from Pedro Almodóvar, Craig Zobel, Quentin Dupieux and, as a 10th place tie leading to 11 selections, new courtroom dramas by Steve McQueen and Aaron Sorkin.
Check out the list below via Baltimore Fishbowl, which will appear in the next issue of Artforum. We’ve also included links to our reviews.
1. Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack)
2. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)
3. The Hunt...
- 11/27/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Schitt’s Creek has climbed up the Nielsen streaming charts, unseating Ryan Murphy’s Ratched, with 968 million minutes of viewing from September 28 to October 4.
The comedy series from Pop, swept the comedy categories at the Emmy Awards back in September, with all members of the main cast taking home wins in their respective areas. Despite appearing on Netflix back in 2017, the Dan Levy and Eugene Levy-created show continues to see a post-Emmys bump – raking in 75 million more minutes from the previous reported week.
Following Schitt’s Creek are The Office, The Blacklist and Grey’s Anatomy. The latter climbed up the rankings, overtaking Amazon’s The Boys. The superhero drama from Eric Kripke was the only non-Netflix title to crack the top ten, bringing in 655 million viewing minutes.
Also cracking the top 10 were Criminal Minds, NCIS and American Murder: Family Next Door. Netflix’s true crime doc premiered on September 30 and brought in 778 million minutes of viewing.
The comedy series from Pop, swept the comedy categories at the Emmy Awards back in September, with all members of the main cast taking home wins in their respective areas. Despite appearing on Netflix back in 2017, the Dan Levy and Eugene Levy-created show continues to see a post-Emmys bump – raking in 75 million more minutes from the previous reported week.
Following Schitt’s Creek are The Office, The Blacklist and Grey’s Anatomy. The latter climbed up the rankings, overtaking Amazon’s The Boys. The superhero drama from Eric Kripke was the only non-Netflix title to crack the top ten, bringing in 655 million viewing minutes.
Also cracking the top 10 were Criminal Minds, NCIS and American Murder: Family Next Door. Netflix’s true crime doc premiered on September 30 and brought in 778 million minutes of viewing.
- 10/29/2020
- by Alexandra Del Rosario
- Deadline Film + TV
Netflix has given another glimpse into its viewership figures and revealed that American Murder: The Family Next Door has become its most watched doc feature to date.
The streamer, which just posted its third quarter financials, revealed that the true crime doc is projected to be watched by 52M subscribers in its first 28 days. This makes it its best performing feature doc since it moved into the genre.
It also scored its second best performing feature doc with The Social Dilemma. The social media documentary was watched by 38M households in its first 28 days.
American Murder: The Family Next Door, directed by Jenny Popplewell, follows the story of the 2018 Watts family murders. It was released on September 30.
The Social Dilemma, which is directed by Jeff Orlowski, explores the rise of social media and the damage it causes to society. It launched on September 9.
Netflix has also released viewing figures for...
The streamer, which just posted its third quarter financials, revealed that the true crime doc is projected to be watched by 52M subscribers in its first 28 days. This makes it its best performing feature doc since it moved into the genre.
It also scored its second best performing feature doc with The Social Dilemma. The social media documentary was watched by 38M households in its first 28 days.
American Murder: The Family Next Door, directed by Jenny Popplewell, follows the story of the 2018 Watts family murders. It was released on September 30.
The Social Dilemma, which is directed by Jeff Orlowski, explores the rise of social media and the damage it causes to society. It launched on September 9.
Netflix has also released viewing figures for...
- 10/20/2020
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
On August 15, 2018, Chris Watts confessed to killing his pregnant wife Shan’ann, but said he did it in a fit of rage after she strangled their children in response to his request for separation. A few days later, he admitted the lie and confessed that he also killed their two young daughters. In between, all hell broke loose. The Colorado drama made national headlines, and for a few days Shan’ann became the focal point for a particular set of news-obsessed freaks who thought nothing of tearing apart a dead woman’s reputation because a) social media made it easy and b) her husband did the same thing.
Jenny Popplewell’s slickly made “American Murder: The Family Next Door” only spends a few minutes analyzing those awful days when people and pundits took to TV and the internet to announce that Shan’ann deserved to be killed, but her true-crime...
Jenny Popplewell’s slickly made “American Murder: The Family Next Door” only spends a few minutes analyzing those awful days when people and pundits took to TV and the internet to announce that Shan’ann deserved to be killed, but her true-crime...
- 9/28/2020
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Marriage Story: Popplewell Explores Watts Family Tragedy
If Tolstoy asserted through his opening statements in Anna Karenina an adage of all happy families being the same, before even sliding into his opposing notation about their counterparts, perhaps its time to realize there’s really no such thing as a happy family. Such could be the observation from sifting through the plethora of filmed materials regarding the Watts family tragedy of 2018, wherein a married Colorado man murdered his pregnant wife and their two children. Director Jenny Popplewell edits together an extraordinary amount of filmed material, from police body cams, a bevy of social media material from victim Shanann Watts, and the ensuing filmed courtroom trial to fixate on what may have been a media frenzy story with a narrative now so familiar it’s become an expected cliché—at least one mined continually in the annals of Dateline and other such...
If Tolstoy asserted through his opening statements in Anna Karenina an adage of all happy families being the same, before even sliding into his opposing notation about their counterparts, perhaps its time to realize there’s really no such thing as a happy family. Such could be the observation from sifting through the plethora of filmed materials regarding the Watts family tragedy of 2018, wherein a married Colorado man murdered his pregnant wife and their two children. Director Jenny Popplewell edits together an extraordinary amount of filmed material, from police body cams, a bevy of social media material from victim Shanann Watts, and the ensuing filmed courtroom trial to fixate on what may have been a media frenzy story with a narrative now so familiar it’s become an expected cliché—at least one mined continually in the annals of Dateline and other such...
- 9/28/2020
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Director Jenny Popplewell went through the late Shanann Watts’ cellphone and personal computer with her family’s blessing to piece together her final days in as close to her own words as possible. It’s an admirable exercise considering the only other way to even guess at her state of mind and actions came from what others were saying. And since her husband Chris gradually alters that story once more evidence is uncovered (as revealed through police recordings) to refute previous iterations, we find ourselves in desperate need of her voice. We need to know Shanann adored her girls CeCe and Bella. We need to know she loved Chris and wanted their marriage to mend. We need to know that hearsay can no longer refute the truth behind her murder.
That’s the main reason American Murder: The Family Next Door exists. Watts’ homicide became a national headline as the...
That’s the main reason American Murder: The Family Next Door exists. Watts’ homicide became a national headline as the...
- 9/28/2020
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Jenny Popplewell’s true-crime documentary “American Murder: The Family Next Door” takes place in the kind of neighborhood where you can imagine somebody saying, “You don’t expect this sort of thing to happen here.” The corner of Frederick, Colorado we see in the movie is one of those sparkling new suburbs where the lawns and paint jobs are CGI bright and nothing much ever seems to happen, until it does.
Continue reading ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’ Is Bare-Bones True Crime That Leaves Too Much Unsaid [Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’ Is Bare-Bones True Crime That Leaves Too Much Unsaid [Review] at The Playlist.
- 9/26/2020
- by Chris Barsanti
- The Playlist
The chilling first trailer for American Murder: The Family Next Door gives a voice to the victims in a triple murder that shocked the world. The new documentary, from director Jenny Popplewell and Oscar-winning executive producer James Marsh, brings audiences into the grim mystery leading up to the deaths of 34-year-old Shanann Watts and her two young daughters, who, in 2018, were reported missing in…...
- 9/17/2020
- by Gaius Bolling
- JoBlo.com
"She said, 'things were bad...'" Netflix has unveiled an official trailer for an intense true-crime documentary film titled American Murder: The Family Next Door, an 82 min feature film debuting on Netflix this month. Shanann Watts and her two young daughters went missing in Frederick, Colorado. As details of their deaths made headlines worldwide, it became clear that Shanann’s husband, Chris Watts, wasn’t the man he appeared to be. Experience a gripping and immersive examination of the disintegration of a marriage. It is one of the first films "to give a voice to the victims." Filmmaker Jenny Popplewell spent days with Shanann's parents and brother in North Carolina and it was with their blessing that she was able to look through Shanann's personal laptop and phone. This never before seen footage truly gives a voice to Shanann and her daughters instead of their killer – a "refreshing new take" on true crime.
- 9/16/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
One of the more gruesome familicides in recent history will be the focus of the upcoming Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door, a in-depth and terrifying look at the killing of the Watts family.
The first trailer for the documentary presents the Watts’ — Chris and Shanann and their two young daughters — as a happy and loving family, with Shanann’s own vlogs from social media used to chilling effect.
“I went through one of the darkest times of my life, and then I met Chris. And he’s...
The first trailer for the documentary presents the Watts’ — Chris and Shanann and their two young daughters — as a happy and loving family, with Shanann’s own vlogs from social media used to chilling effect.
“I went through one of the darkest times of my life, and then I met Chris. And he’s...
- 9/16/2020
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
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