SXSW 2021 Reviews: Sasquatch, Kid Candidate, Confronting a Serial Killer

South by Southwest (SXSW) 2021 has finally arrived! Though we have a mountain of films to get to throughout the course of the event, don’t miss our detailed podcast next week where we discuss every film screened this year, let’s take a look first at the opening day’s documentaries I indulged: Confronting a Serial Killer, Kid Candidate, and Sasquatch.

Confronting a Serial Killer

Prolific true-crime auteur Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, The Ted Bundy Tapes) returns for another trip down macabre lane with the STARZ Original, Confronting a Serial Killer. We follow author Jillian Lauren as she establishes and nurtures a relationship with a prolific serial killer of scores of women, Sam Little.

What begins as a rather rudimentary exercise in yet another imprisoned murderer bragging about his excesses – seriously, the sheer number of serial killer documentaries around is enough to keep me indoors for the remainder of my days – quickly morphs into an exploration of victims and their need to understand. As willing participants, audiences already are desperate to understand the motives of serial killers, it’s a fascinatingly grim fact of today’s need-to-know-everything social discourse. Yet rarely do documentaries of this sort focus more on the victims than the victimizer, as they question the whys of the horrors they’ve miraculously survived.

For the two episodes available for viewing, Sam Little’s recorded voice permeates the proceedings and make no mistake, he’s an absolute monster. No hyperbole is necessary to sell what a demonic presence this maniac is. But instead of playing his taped confessions over-and-over to milk every ounce of panic from audiences, Berlinger focuses on the women whose lives he took.

Their journeys and their spirits often surface to overtake the hatefulness of Little’s words. At one point, even pitting a victim who narrowly escaped alive with the prosecutor who felt she was a tainted witness because of her prostitution history. It is a tragic reckoning we all need to have with ourselves that society – for many years – has allowed murderers to roam free simply because juries could not bother to accept a prostitute’s word as fact and being treated as unworthy of our empathy.

Jillian Lauren, effectively our narrator of this story, is also allowed to live and breathe as a character, showcasing her own trauma. Her plight to get Sam Little’s story out to the masses, as well as her personal struggles with the severity of his crimes, compound to make this a fresh coat of pain on the tired genre of true-crime docs.

The Hollywood Outsider Rating: 6.5/10

Kid Candidate

Back in 2018, Hayden Pedigo – a young man of just 24 – released an odd Harmony Korine influenced video announcing his candidacy for city council in Amarillo, TX. It was nothing more than a stunt attempting to garner a bit of a social media presence…and it worked! Becoming a local sensation when the video went viral, Pedigo decided to take on the system and make a legitimate run for office.

Kid Candidate follows Pendigo’s plight to win a seat, and director Jasmine Stodel wisely focuses on the inexperience of Hayden’s run as much as the campaign itself. Pendigo is bright, but he has no idea what running for city council actually means, let alone the intricacies of a life in politics. As Pendigo’s de facto campaign advisor, Jeff Blackburn seems to believe very little in his own client, as every minute onscreen seems to be another jab at Pendigo’s ineptness.

While a bit unflattering to Hayden Pendigo himself, it was refreshing to see a political documentary showcase the lack of understanding that many of us in the audience and Pendigo himself actually hold in the political process. Pendigo has no idea what he is doing, but that never stops him from making a valiant effort to learn.

Much of the film bounces back-and-forth between Pendigo and the other candidates running, as well as the lack of investment they seem to have in the actual needs of the community. This offers depth to the proceedings, yet it also volleys a bit too much and ultimately distracts from the more compelling aspects of an innocent being baptized in the fiery waters of political discourse. Overall, Kid Candidate provides insight into a fascinating story that could have used just a bit more focus on our primary target.

The Hollywood Outsider Rating: 5/10

Sasquatch

“Bigfoot…murdered three guys on a dope farm.”

That’s how you want a documentary to hit the ground running. From the opening minutes of Hulu’s upcoming documentary series, Sasquatch, investigative journalist David Holthouse informs us (complete with an animated recounting events) of how absurd he knows the prospect of Bigfoot is. He’s well aware people have scoffed at the idea for generations, and thus even kept this story to himself for over two decades. Yet there is one thing he cannot shake, in 1993 he witnessed strangers claim that a sasquatch mutilated three men in the woods one dark night.

Director Joshua Rofé has a difficult task from the outset; he is full aware that the majority of Joe Public watching will be doing so with a wink and a nod. It’s a feat to take Bigfoot seriously as a reality. Therefore, he immediately commits fully that he is not ever going to join in the mockery. Every subject, witness, and piece of “evidence” is treated as accurately and fairly as Joe Berlinger’s docs would. It is an important distinction because if Rofé and Holthouse would not believe in this possibility, why should we? This commitment is what ultimately makes Sasquatch so compelling.

From sasquatch hunters to weed farmers to random sightings and even a bit of video evidence, Rofé and Holthouse (our private investigator of sorts) hand themselves wholly over to the idea that Bigfoot does, in fact, exist. Maybe. And, if no one is going to hold it against me, I have to admit that even a person as skeptical as I am began reflecting once or twice on the proof provided.

A thriller wrapped in a riddle, Sasquatch is a fun ride ripe for dissecting among internet sleuths. By the end, I was ready to gear up and lead a sasquatch hunt myself.

The Hollywood Outsider Rating: 7/10

Follow our further discussion on over 30 film and episodic premieres screened at SXSW 2021 via this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: