Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Murder 360’ on Paramount+, a docuseries that claims to examine murder cases from all angles
Murder 360 is a true crime docuseries whose anthology format takes what they claim to be an “all angles” look at a different grisly murder in each episode. The first episode examines the 2009 murder of 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten in the tiny Missouri town of St. Martens. Eventually, law enforcement arrested 15-year-old Alyssa Bustamante, a neighbor of Olten’s who was the last person to see her alive.
MURDER 360: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A voice says “Every person that worked on this case was traumatized on some level,” as we see flashing drone images and crime scene photos.
The Gist: The story of Elizabeth Olten’s murder is told more from the perspective of Alyssa Bustamante’s family, however, as her grandparents and brother are interviewed for the episode. Bustamante was a pretty typical happy kid but her personality took a dark turn when she became a teenager, and when law enforcement turned their investigation towards Bustamante, they saw all sorts of evidence that pointed to the fact that she might have committed this heinous crime, including a journal entry that she crossed out, but whose impressions could be read via a light placed underneath the page.
We see Bustamante being interrogated by police, which eventually led to her confessing to killing Olten; Bustamante eventually told police where she buried the girl.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The anthology format of Murder 360 is reminiscent of Unsolved Mysteries or FBI: True.
Our Take: True-crime anthology series have a tall task to accomplish, because they have to go over the basics of a case in the span of, in the case of Murder 360, about 45 minutes. They don’t have time to really go into the lives of the victim or examine how the murder affected family members and law enforcement. They also try to make up for the overview-style narrative with quick cuts and intense music, which sometimes makes these shows look more like a Dateline or 48 Hours episode and less like a thoughtful examination of tragic cases like the one we get in the first episode.
Because of what they claim is their “all angles” approach to these murders, Murder 360 has to choose a perspective to examine for a particular episode, and that ends up giving short shrift to the other parts of an episode’s story. Here, the concentration is on Alyssa Bustamante, and how she went from happy kid to murderous emo nightmare.
There isn’t a whole hell of a lot of nuance in this portrayal; we see the former sheriff of Cole County, Greg White, talk about the idea that there is “evil afoot in the world” (a phrase he uses multiple times), but not much about Bustamante’s declining mental health. Her grandparents, who were raising her, said they did everything they could to help her, so the obvious conclusion is that she was just evil, right? Given what her grandparents say about how she feels about her actions now that she’s in her 30s and has been denied parole, the story begs for a further examination of how dark emotions like Bustamante was suffering from wreak havoc on a developing brain.
As usual, the victim gets the short end of the storytelling stick here; we don’t even hear from Elizabeth’s family in this episode. If the series were truly taking the 360-degree view of their cases that their title suggests, we’d hear from someone connected to Elizabeth Olten. But that would likely also mean that the producers couldn’t cover ten cases in ten episodes.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Scenes from the second episode, about a young couple that disappeared.
Sleeper Star: This definitely goes to Bustamante’s grandparents, especially her grandmother, who had to listen on in horror as Bustamante started admitting to the murder of Olten during her police interrogation.
Most Pilot-y Line: Most of the talking head interviews are literally just heads — that’s how close-up the camera is — and it’s distracting.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Murder 360‘s format pretty much keeps it from doing what its title and logline promise, which is take a look at grisly murders from all angles. In fact, the anthology format pretty much guarantees superficial takes on the murder victims and perpetrators.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
