Don't F**k With Cats (2019)

When we last saw web sleuths in action (two weeks ago, in Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel) they were mostly all wrong. Here they are mostly all right. This Netflix miniseries starts, as so many things do, on Facebook, when a video was posted called "1 Boy 2 Kittens." Part of what is so interesting about this documentary is the power of this video and others posted by the same fellow. They are mercifully never shown to us, except in very small fragments, but they literally break down web sleuths and a police detective, who respond with blubbering tears and outrage, as do we all just knowing about it. In the first video the cats are killed by being placed in plastic bags from which the air is removed with a vacuum cleaner. These kittens are barely weaned, not even two months old, and they die. We see the corpses briefly, which he keeps in his refrigerator for later videos. This mysterious fellow kills other animals for videos and eventually goes on to kill a person. His story is another one that belongs to the internet age, interesting and creepy in its own right. Those of us who believe that wantonly killing animals ritualistically is a sign of a serial killer working himself up to bigger crimes are not surprised by how this case turns, but until that murder the web sleuths are unable to get the attention of the police IRL to take it seriously. For one thing, figuring out who the guy is at all and then where he lives in the world is no easy thing. The web sleuths manage it—all the various details of how they do so are there to be discovered. It's fair to call it fascinating, and relatable too, especially when they can't get the attention of the police once they have found the guy. Along the way, unfortunately, they do find at least one wrong guy, who is then hounded and harassed by web sleuth hangers-on until he commits suicide. Oops. That's the problem with these internet things. You can find out amazing things, but the mob feelings incited can also go out of control and ruin the lives of innocent people as well as guilty. On the other hand, our cat killer is anything but innocent and in general police will not take the case seriously until he actually does kill a person, also again done for the camera. Thanks to the work of the web sleuths—basically one of those private Facebook groups that can cause so much trouble—police are able to get the guy after only the one murder. If you have tender feelings like me for animals you have to be careful with this miniseries, which I think is worth seeing. They never show much, but your imagination is fully inflamed to terrible things. It's probably the next-worst thing to seeing the videos (which I refuse to look at myself) but at least there's a happy ending here and altogether it's an interesting ride.