As Episode 1 of "A Brutal Pact: The Murder of Daniella Perez" (2022 release from Brazil; 5 episodes of about 60 min each) opens, it is "December 28, 1992", and we learn that a 22 yo well-known Brazilian soap opera star, Daniella Perez, is found brutally murdered. Her mother Gloria, the writer of the soap that starred her daughter, laments: "there were only good things on the horizon, then we were crushed by December 28". We then go back in time to Daniella's upbringing, and what eventually made her a start at such a young age... At this point we are 10 min into Episode 1.
Couple of comments: 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of these terrible events, but it's clear that in Brazil many people still talk about it like it happened yesterday. There are many. Many talking heads, from family to other actors to the police who investigated, and so forth. In fact, I was taken aback by the sheer volume of on-camera interviews done 30 years later, as opposed to showing the TV clips and other archive footage from 1992 (to be clear: there are some of those, but not nearly enough). But here is the biggest challenge: by the end of Episode , we know who is responsible for the murder, and in Episode 2 we now start digging into the why, and by the end of Episode 2, I thought to myself: am I really going to sit through 3 more hours of this? I immediately knew I had already answered my own question. Bottom line: these events seem to have had a profound effect on Brazilian society but it never resonated with me, and I couldn't get into it. Even though I am a huge fan of true crime documentaries, I bailed after 2 episodes.
"A Brutal Pact: The Murder of Daniella Perez" recently premiered on HBO Max, and all 5 episodes are now available. If you are a fan of true crime documentaries, I'd readily suggest you check this out, with expectations firmly in check, and draw your own conclusion.
