L'énigme Natalia Grace

This story is CRAZY!! I don't understand people giving the series a low rating bc they don't like the events that transpired. What's the point of you watching true crime?! Of course it's all heinous, and it's nothing you would thumbs up if you were reviewing the acts themselves, but you aren't. It does what most do, provides you with one side and then the other and you end you not knowing how you feel about it ("I love you, Now die" was the same way).

It's creepy, it's insane to imagine these things happened for real (bc I have seen "the orphan" movies), and yes the dad is a horrible actor, performing what he thinks is necessary to emote his storyline, but the series is still very interesting!

If you binged it so hard bc you had to hear the rest of the story, and then gave it a low rating bc you didn't like the outcome, you shouldn't be rating tv or film.

What we get here are 6 episodes of Michael Barnett overacting all sorts of scenarii, the focus always on him instead of the main subject which is Natalia.

The filmmakers wallow in all the trashiest sensationalist aspects of the story and, especially Barnett's character, instead of giving a serious account of facts (no doctor is interviewed to give a scientific opinion on her age, no psychiatrist on her mental state). She is not even given the chance to express herself at any point.

We're only given Michael Barnett's version which is ridiculous most of the time, so fake it's cringeworthy.

This curious story deserved a serious approach, and I feel really bad for the people who were used to make this pseudo-documentary : Natalia and the hell she endured, and also the boys, Jake mostly, who is obviously traumatised by what happened in this house.

This is trash, and Michael Barnett is unsufferable.

A lot of intentional hype by people participating in the documentary. Overall, it's a puzzling but good story. However, some of the biggest questions were NOT answered.

1. How were the parents able to change her age so easily? This seems to be a more serious SYSTEMIC issue because this allows sexual predators to potentially abuse the system.

2. Why the court is allowed to disregard the girl's real biological age? Seems like it's a play to cover their own grave mistake.

3. Recall after Natalia started living by herself on her own in the first neighborhood, neighbors didn't particularly like her. I could not reconcile what was said with the fact that she is completely innocent.

The story is very compelling and wild on its own, I don't understand why parts are done in a corny, early-2000s TLC reality show style. The show is so ridiculously overproduced, it can be hard to watch and take seriously.

It only gets worse with season 2. Just tell the story and don't add the sensational nonsense that cheapens it.

If you can stomach the scenes that seem like it's the umpteenth time someone delivered a line, there is still a really good story to unpack and some of the interviews are a breath of fresh air that helped me hang in there.

That's all I had to say about the show but had to add more text to meet the minimum. :/

My stars review come only for the DePaul family and Natalia's life story, in any way for the quality of the documentary.

Absolutely heartbreaking - a young woman with complex trauma presented as a villan. The documentary was much longer than it needed to be, a whole season for that buffoon of a man?? Seriously? The producers of the documentary didn't do a good job morally and ethically. The story is that of a child adopted into the US from Ukraine that went from bad to worst, she was sold by the first sdopting family, tortured and abandoned by the second, beatean and taken advantage by the 3rd and there are no legal consequeances for all this monsters living and continuing to deceive and steal and torture others. It's mind blowing! Ther's absolutly no justice in all 3 seasons. It's impossible for me to understand how this is even happening? Nobody in jail? Nobody?

She was not socilised, she had no documentsm, she was not registred to any kind of education institution, she was kep for the most part of her life as a human punching bag and credit card.

The only decent people in this entire story are the DePaul family and I'm happy she got to meet them again and they had the patience, understanding and so much love to try to make it work.

She'll have to deal with her trauma for the rest of her life and I really hope that there is a functional justice system somewhere and I'll get to read the news at some point that all this families are being held legally liable.