This is a true crime documentary about a 21-year-old girl named Elisa Lam who vanished without a trace at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. I had no idea back in 2013 this disappearance case had the world in its clutches because of the last video footage of her at a lift.
First thing, I find it weird that Caucasians kept pronouncing her surname as “lamb” when us locals would say “lum”. Anyway, that’s just a nitpick.
I enjoy the setup which is where the documentary is at its strongest. It paints the Cecil Hotel historically, culturally and geographically. The high-angled crane shots of the rundown hotel sent shivers down my spine. The 700-room hotel had seen better days and in 2013 it is practically the nexus of evil. Murders, rapes and drug abuse were rampant. It even housed two serial rapists cum killers. The hotel was practically a chillout place for the disenfranchised and evil. It was the place Mr S.A. Tan would hold his annual dinner and dance.
Into this world of pain and hurt, comes a college student and tourist suffering from Bipolar Disorder. Ultimately, what happened to her was tragic.
As a true crime documentary I found this wanting in many areas. The maker is not interested to really know who was Elisa Lam. If he is he would have interviewed friends and families who knew the girl. The documentary is more interested in going down a different rabbit hole of morbid fascination with the last video footage of Elisa Lam. Originally, I wanted to include it in my post but I think I better not. It’s disturbing and bizarre. When the clip was released by the LAPD to get help from the public, it led to multitudes of people getting fascinated by it, leading to an obsession that had no limit. Overnight, YouTubers became web sleuths. Conspiracy theories grew to the size of rain forests. Everyone wanted Elisa Lam to be a victim of a terrible crime till the point they could character assassinate anyone who was remotely connected to Cecil Hotel and Elisa Lam. In that sense, the documentary is a clever indictment of people who want so hard to believe in something they will read into anything to correlate with what they believe in, and that’s one scary thought. But it is also because of this that it becomes really hard to see the merit in a documentary which isn’t interested in facts and instead gives the spotlight to YouTubers who threw up so many conspiracy theories of hotel and police cover-ups. It becomes even painful to see these web sleuths poring over Elisa Lam’s social media posts, proclaiming they know her and cry for her (one of them even got a friend to go to a cemetery in Canada to film the grave just so that he can say he finally has closure… good grief). You really have to take everything they say with a mouthful of salt.
This is a 2-hour documentary dragged out to 4 hours and by the end of it you would have seen the infamous video footage at least 20 times. You will need to have willpower the size of a superpower to not go beyond the solid first episode and when it cuts to black you will realise it is 4 hours you can’t get back. The documentary does offer a credible conclusion about the bizarre case and I can go with it. Any which way you see it, it is a tragic case of a girl suffering from a mental disorder. Her death could have been prevented and that’s the sad part.
Written by Daniel Chiam
BookMyShow Singapore 
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