5.5/10
Devil's Knot is the book that opened my eyes to the West Memphis Three case, and it's not surprising it was eventually turned into a feature film, especially with the recent release of the WM3 stirring up new interest in the case. However, in the intervening years, we've had 4 documentaries on the crimes, so is a big budget reenactment really necessary? This movie doesn't do much to dissuade me from the opinion that it wasn't. Director Atom Egoyan is mostly wasting his talents here, and visibly struggles with the overwhelming material about the case, using multiple devices (voiceovers, subtitles, flashbacks, dream sequences, etc) to cram in as much pertinent info as he can. The result is pretty messy. The courtroom scenes are well-handled and by far the movie's strength, but they sit awkwardly against anything taking place on the outside - witness a particularly cringe-inducing scene in an elementary school, for example.
Egoyan also appears to have had no idea how to end the movie, stopping it abruptly and using text to fill in the "here's what happened since" blanks.
The WM3 story is a fascinating one, but either it doesn't translate to feature film format or Egoyan wasn't the right choice to make the attempt.
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