A Gray State

It was said that "this story gets you, you can't wash it off..." Haunting. It's the only word to describe A Gray State. The story of a family slowly going off the rails is well laid-out, even if it's tragically predictable.

It's a dark ride into the dark recesses of madness, in real time, as documented by the insane person. Yeah, okay that sounds fun. A modern retelling of The Shining, only it's non-fiction.

From the onset, you get the details of an family everyone envies, a supportive wife, wonderful daughter and charismatic and driven father. The entire family seems to be involved in the making of a feature film, it has momentum and real progress. Behind the scenes is a family - a father and his decent into madness. As an ex soldier in Afghanistan, he details his experiences and the trauma slowly reveals itaelf as the story unfolds. What makes it predictable is that the family is so idyllic - there *must* be something wrong - and tit's laid out painstakingly with meaningful interviews with people that knew the family.

The filmmakers lay it out methodically and it seems to only heighten the sense of dread, the doom that's coming.

The story itself is so compelling and captivating that I had done my own research into these events after watching this. The material is ideal soil for the conspiracies to take root. It's a sad, misguided distraction and only takes away from the dreadful conclusion.

David Crowley carefully orchestrated and crafted his life, his exit was his final act and very calculated - complete with its own soundtrack.

Must watch - but be prepared to be affected by this for a while...

While I do think this was a great documentary with an interesting enough story to tell, it was slightly repetitive in spots. About a new director with budding potential named David Crowley who is mysteriously murdered while creating an admittedly provocative film about a police state with an oppressive government. The story, while repetitive at times, does a great job telling the story to the viewer, providing an easily understood story of David's personal life, his life as a promising new director, and his families unfortunate end. But as I said before, the only slight drawback is that it often repeats itself when telling the story. And we will discuss it.

The film jumps around between David's personal life, his work on the film, and his murder. The issue is SOMETIMES, the story repeats itself when starting a new section. I found myself thinking that the film already explained that he was a potentially great film maker, feeling that the film repeats its to remind you of things that didn't happen too long ago for me to forget and need to be reminded. I would have also liked to hear more about his murder, which I found to be an interesting plot line that wasn't fleshed out as much as I would of hoped. But I must emphasize that these are only minor issues.

Over all I would recommend the film to anyone, though some may find it to be too conspiracy theory laden, but as an avid documentary viewer, I enjoyed it.

Doesn't deserve any stars. This is a total whitewash to hide the real meaning behind the original movie. The director was attempting to expose the dark aide of freemasonry as well as the overall agenda for world domination of the 33rd degree and related secret societies which workshop what can only be called an evil agenda.

I think the low rating, at least among those voting and not the critics who like the film, is disappointment the filmmakers did not turn Crowley into some kind of martyr, but treated him as the disturbed murderer that he was. As we've seen in the news so many times just in the last couple years, This can very well be the results of following absurd and dangerous conspiracy theories and letting your emotions overtake your reason. Even more relevant in 2019 than it was when first released. Highly recommended!

If I could give the film the same rating as the amount of crime-scene investigative details provided, it would be zero, A better title would be "Crowley Family Home Movies Plus Interviews." By the way, if so-called "friends" (like maybe some guy you once met in grade school) go around saying you murdered your family and killed yourself without evidence, they were never friends. Any dissenting opinion to the official suburban Minneapolis Police's narrative is suspiciously absent. Next, they will tell us George Floyd committed suicide too, the location of those events being at the focal point of the proposed film Crowley was working on since 2010.