Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee

Watch it with some friends. It's absurd, enthralling and hilarious in many parts. If you appreciate debaucherous, self-indulgent narcissists and their follies, I say strap in. Drugs, booze, guns, corruption and the open sea. (They should have asked me to write a tagline for this one)

For those criticizing Netflix's ever-growing catalogue of bloated documentaries/docu-series; I hear you. They've been on a run for a while. Please keep in mind this is a one-off 1:40:00 doc and there are zero lulls within. You won't have to commit to three episodes of meandering fluff with no payoff. This one is a blast.

"Running with the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee" is the cinematic equivalent of a wild, bumpy ride on a rickety carnival attraction that you're not entirely sure has passed safety inspections. It's okay in the way that you leave the theater feeling slightly entertained but also like you might have been safer just watching paint dry. This documentary attempts to stitch together the chaotic tapestry that was McAfee's life, from antivirus pioneer to international man of mystery, and it does so with the subtlety of a sledgehammer at a glassblowing show.

Where this film hits the middle ground of mediocrity is its schizophrenic tone. One second, it's a tech thriller with all the cyber-panache of a 90s hacker movie; the next, it's a bizarre pseudo-philosophical ramble through the jungles of Belize. The filmmakers throw in everything but the kitchen sink, possibly believing that McAfee's eccentric life could only be matched by an equally erratic narrative style. This results in a viewing experience that is as disorienting as reading McAfee's own Twitter feed might have been-amusing yet perplexing, and you're not quite sure what to make of it all.

The documentary does manage to capture some genuinely intriguing moments that peel back the layers of McAfee's wild persona, giving glimpses into the man behind the media mask. However, these moments are fleeting, lost in a sea of over-the-top reenactments and interviews that range from enlightening to eyebrow-raising. It's a 3-star scramble that leaves you somewhat entertained but also a bit exhausted, like finishing a marathon through a hall of mirrors. In essence, it's perfectly okay-if okay means leaving the cinema as baffled as you were intrigued.

The majority of this documentary is focused on a Vice reporter and photographer and not on John McAfee. It barely covers his legitimate career in software, the circumstances of the murder in Belize he is suspected of and provides nothing insightful about his death in Spain. It's laughable the amount of interviews they have with the Vice guys. I mean who cares what these two idiots have to say. Do yourself a favor and read his Wikipedia page if you are curious and skip this so called documentary.

I would have liked to see the documentary they were making with decent editing and camera work (looks like a child filmed this). Instead I saw tiresome mess consisting of more interviews of the makers of the document, than interviews of McAfee.

As someone who was previously very tied into and intrigued by the almost bond villan-like history of John McAfee, I was initially very excited to see a first-hand account of his endeavors at a personal level.

Overall, I felt that the actual storytelling and timeline of this documentary left a lot to desire and more questions than answers. A lot of the content focused more or less on the storytellig of the documentarians who followed him rather than making McAfee the focal point of of the story.

The overall structure and format of the documentary also seemed all over the place and seemed to follow a plot line and just pivot to something else. For instance, the ghostwriter who essentially knows his life story first-hand was given only a few minutes of screentime while being a great source for his background and history.

Candidly, I think this documentary would have been more effective as a 4 episode mini-series that spends more time developing and diving into the context of WHO John McAfee actually was on top of more context rather than constant sound bites and clips that don't really provide much context.