Netflix’s “Crime Scene” Elisa Lam Documentary Exposes a World of Online Conspiracy Theories
SPOILERS FOLLOW.*
The Netflix documentary, Crime Scene: The Disappearance at the Cecil Hotel. explores the investigation into the disappearance of 21 year-old Canadian student, Elisa Lam, from the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in February 2013. I went in expecting a whodunit but ended up watching a series that documents the unfolding of a set of escalating conspiracy theories that gripped the amateur sleuth community that became obsessed with solving the mystery of Elisa’s disappearance. The documentary is as much about information and patterns and how we process them in groups as it is about Elisa and her mysterious vanishing. I don’t think the documentary balances the different aspects of the story (the mystery, the conspiracy theories that emerged, the police investigation, etc.) as well as it could have. There is a lack of focus. The series never quite pins down what it wants to be — a traditional true crime documentary about a disappearance, an examination of conspiracist thinking, or a history of the Cecil Hotel. Even so, it holds your attention, and in the world of QAnon, Pizzagate, and other bizarre conspiracies that are springing up globally, it is a timely story that lays out how conspiracist thinking emerges, takes hold, and spirals. The series also examines how a place and…
