#I love you now die free

Still, Carr smartly constructs this story with plenty of cultural analysis, offering viewers insight into the trope of the teenage seductress/succubus/witch who lures innocent men to her doom. Both she and her parents declined to be interviewed for this film, but regardless, the producers should have filled us in on the broader context of her life and upbringing. But aside from being privy to educated guesses about her mental state at the time she played a devil on Roy’s shoulder, we get no sense of her biography. You only hear her high, childlike voice once during the documentary, audio from her interviews with police prior to her arrest. You get no sense of her possible contrition or humiliation, which is riveting to watch in and of itself. (She was a known liar to her friends, for example.) Her impenetrable face sits impassively throughout large portions of her trial, even as evidence of her own guilt and frailty come to life. But it all feels like hearsay - even her own words.

Carr questions which party actually had the least tenuous grasp on reality.Ĭarter herself is the true cipher of this tale, her alleged motive merely eked out from slick defense lawyers, controversial psychiatrists, investigative reporters and her own enigmatic texts. Were Roy’s anxiety, depression and multiple suicide attempts a result of his parents’ acrimonious divorce and sometimes violent aggression toward him? Did Carter encourage Roy’s suicide because she was a needy self-harmer struggling with mental health issues, a sociopath seeking attention as a grieving girlfriend, a daydreamer living in a romantic Glee-fueled fantasy world or a misguided friend trying to ease his suffering? Truthfully, the pair were more pixel than flesh to each other, having lived only an hour away by car but never meeting in person more than a handful of times in the two years of their relationship. These silent moments reading their staccato, teen-speak sentences lull you into an elegiac rhythm, their words bobbling along like a shared poem. Much of the doc is peppered with images of bucolic New England lighthouses and rippling oceanic waters set against Roy and Carter’s pinging texts to each other. Ultimately, however, the narrative is more akin to a seaside Lynchian fever dream, your brain conjuring up actors like Miles Teller and Cara Delevingne whispering horrible nothings at each other into the thin air of night. Part detective story, part cautionary tale and part courtroom drama, the documentary weaves you through multiple (and often confounding) angles, from Roy’s unreliable narrator parents to Carter’s Teflon defense team to a quack doctor who may or may not have a sound argument in the end. After all, soliciting a murder is a crime… but it’s an underlying crime regardless. 'Big Little Lies' Finale to 'Bohemian Rhapsody': What's Coming to HBO in July

#I love you now die free

Could mere words alone Wormtongue a person toward his or her own death? Can prosecutors and defense attorneys prove the nature of free will? What is the cognitive neuroscience behind two psychologically impaired adolescents manipulating each other with the tools of technological dystopia?

Like the popular teen drama 13 Reasons Why, which also unpacks the tragedy of suicide, I Love You, Now Die is an inverse whodunit: a metaphysical mystery where you already know whodunit, but not exactly why or who else may be objectively liable. (Warning: Best not bring up the case during an otherwise pleasant vacation dinner with friends.) And as Carr demonstrates via recorded interviews with incredulous Massachusetts locals, the Commonwealth v. (Night one is devoted to Roy’s alleged point-of-view night two explores Carter’s.) No matter how your judgment vacillates, the more you learn, the more you just realize how deeply weird this story is.

It’s the stuff of a Jodi Picoult novel.ĭirector Erin Lee Carr ( Mommy Dead and Dearest) deftly layers her story with arguments, reveals and twists that will continuously unearth and rebury your opinion on Carter’s culpability, even long after the doc’s final moments. But the question of whether the 17-year-old girl was ultimately responsible for her boyfriend’s death is the crux of HBO’s captivating two-part documentary I Love You, Now Die, which relies on journalistic expertise, contradictory witness testimony, absorbing courtroom video recordings and the shocking text exchanges themselves to parse the sticky legal push-and-pull of the case. In 2017, the state convicted Michelle Carter of involuntary manslaughter for her brutal haranguing (which she’s now appealing to the Supreme Court under claims of free speech).