Unabomber: In His Own Words

It would be too generous to the perp to give this film high marks. That is because it veers into a kind of sympathy that a kernel of truth must be heard at any cost. I say kernel because it may be truth that the technological revolution threatens humanity in many ways, but the wholesale destruction of it would be even more destructive. Thus there is little rational reason to the "manifesto's" call for the elimination of all technical and industrial progress. And, of course, there is no humanity in killing and maiming the innocent. TK was a very warped serial killer and it negates any small truths he claims to stand for. If he wasn't so pathologically unfeeling perhaps he could have been balanced in both his thinking and approach. That was not the case and this stands out here. I rate this a 6 because it is simply humanizing a monster too much yet if viewed with that caveat it is not without some value. By the linear chronological reviewing of Kaciynski's long rein of terror it is both fascinating yet harrowing however.

The title and introduction to this doc suggests that we will see some in-depth interview with the unabomber. Unfortunately, we see just snippets of him talking. The actual shown footage of this interview and the images/videos we see when the background story is being told is underwhelming and constantly re-used throughout all 4 episodes. Interesting doc but could have been a lot better.

This is supposed to be a documentary that goes into depth talking about a serial bomber, but every 5 minutes his annoying neighbor (the youngest one) has to tell us about how SHE "feels" and how SHE "knew all along" and how SHE "feared him" growing up! NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU!!!!!! Oh my lord she's annoying!!!!! I'm watching this documentary to understand why he did what he did and how he got caught NOT HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT! Honestly half of her clips is about how she can't imagine growing up next to a serial killer and the other half is about how she feels about him.. useless input that nobody asked for!

The opening song is "Man" by The Worst.

Figured I'd throw that out there since I fell in love with the song as soon as I heard it. Reminded me of "True Detective" or Leonard Cohen.

I may not have enjoyed it if I'd known more about the UNABOMB case because others are saying it has the same info, but this is really well produced. It does feature more words from Kaczynski than I'd ever heard and am certain it's a lot more than has been out there.

It's not the gold mine of info that "The Confessor Killer" was, but it's informative and entertaining. Looking forward to more in what seems like a series from Netflix.

I enjoyed hearing from his family members, and all of the people that were involved with the case one way or the other. However, there was a key member that missing in this documentary, which I think is a shame. James R. Fitzgerald was the profiler in the Unabomber case, and he did play a huge role in solving this crime using forensic linguistics. He did analyze Ted's letters and manifesto, and did came up with a profile that was nowhere near what the FBI had at that point. His language analysis was too valuable to this case to be left out of this documentary, and pretend like someone else was responsible for the good work that Fitz did. He is who pioneered the field of forensic linguistics and that sure does deserve credit.