Der axtschwingende Anhalter

On the surface, this doc charts the viral popularity of Kai, but really it's about the insidious, predatory nature of parasites who deliberately ignored his VERY obvious mental illness to exploit him for their own gain. The warning signs were there from the minute the cameras started rolling - this is a deeply unwell young man who seems unable to parse reality from delusion, and his story inevitably ends in violence. But hey, he gets clicks so the Kardashian producers want to give him a reality TV show. He looks uncomfortable, like a caged animal in a zoo, but I want a selfie to show my friends. Most of the interviews are industry people detailing the various ways they tried to profit off of him while ignoring glaringly obvious red flags, with few if any showing remorse or even self-awareness. This doc also borders on exploitative, but it has value as a satire of our celebrity-obsessed culture and flippant attitude towards mental illness. I'm just not sure that was the goal.

Having never heard of Kai before this documentary, I was really interested in hearing his story. Through interviews with news reporters and television producers, we get a picture painted of a young homeless man with a hippie-esque mentality who became a hero through seemingly justified violence. But as Kai's story progresses, we come to see that he is a more unbalanced and unpredictable person than was originally thought. When police and family are interviewed, we truly begin to see behind the veil of Kai's homeless hippie hero persona.

While this documentary starts off well with lengthy, balanced coverage of Kai's rise to fame vis social media, it falls flat when addressing the crime he is currently imprisoned for. The murder of Joseph Galfy almost seems like an afterthought compared to the build up of Kai's meteoric rise through the majority of the film. Many documentaries covering crimes and convictions of this nature feature interviews with psychologists and legal specialists to better illustrate the antagonist's clinical mental state and history but little is done to showcase this, save for limited interviews with his mother and cousin.

While the story is interesting, this execution of this documentary fails to give a fully balanced look at the entirety of Kai's rise and fall, leaving you saying "Wait, that's the end?".

This is so disturbing. My focus for this review is on the mother. Yes the "powers" of media, took advantage of this young man and then dropped him at the first sign of trouble. One look at this "mother" tells you the true story. The mere fact that when she was informed of his arrest for murder, she smirked and gave a chuckle , enough said. Abuse. It's very clear all the way through this documentary that Kai was sexually abused at one point is his life. With a detached abusive mother and no support, his mental health is not surprising. Everyone ignored this kid. His suffering is obvious. He's muti-generational Canadian First Nation, already at a disadvantage.

There is mention of how good this lawyer "gentleman" was.... no talk of really how much a predator this lawyer was. The murder of him was not ok for sure but for Kai to rot in prison as the sole perpetrator in this disastrous life is not the answer. The depiction of Kai's life in this film is deeply disturbing. He didn't stand a chance.

A decent and engaging documentary about a truly bizarre story. This one ties in viral videos and media sensationalism as Kai, the axe wielding hitchhiker turns from hero and media sweetheart to something very, very different. It is a real reminder to us that what we see on social media and instagram is a polaroid photo of someone's lie, not their life. Kai became a sensation for using his axe to save a victim of road rage and talking to the news in his candid self. As exposure to him increases there is more revealed about his nature-perhaps the nature that lead to him being homeless in the first place as a musically talented, funny hero. When someone talks in streams of consciousness are they brilliant or insane? I often complain that Netflix takes a good documentary story and drags it into 2 or 3 parts unnecessarily, but this one is tightly contained to 1 episode and that is a plus.

So this is a much ado about nothing situation. All this people who are trying to make a buck off of this neuro-atypical kid are disgusting. Of course they pretend to be looking out for him and to want to make him rich, but they could not care less about his well being. They just want to ride the wave of his viral moment. That is not a surprise. In fact nothing is a surprise in this doc, and all the moments that are presented as cliffhangers and mindblowing events are so predictable and ultimately uninteresting, because from the point of view of the ugly people trying to exploit him. If it had been a doc about him, his mental health, the relationship between that and his life choices, or the absence of such relationship, it would have been a much better doc. But the bottom line for this is "we could have made so much money out of him, but he is troubled for real, not just to entertain us."