Despite the overdramatisation, the three-part docuseries can be seen as an interesting ‘meta’ take on how cinema and true crime, in particular, shape our collective minds
That reality is far stranger and juicier than fiction has been Netflix’s most embraced idiom over the years. The streamer’s latest miniseries documentary, American Nightmare, comes as another adamant addition to its now-vast repertoire of true-crime explorations and sticks to this mantra with all its might, as it follows the bizarre abduction case that took place in the United States nearly a decade ago.
Sometime in March 2015, a 20-something physiotherapist named Aaron Quinn rings up the police to report that his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, has been kidnapped from their home. Aaron says a couple of men attacked them around 3 am and took Denise away, even though they were there originally to kidnap his ex-fiancée, Andrea. He says he was drugged by those men and that Denise is currently being held hostage somewhere for $15,000. He doesn’t have the money on him at the moment.
So, Aaron naturally thinks he has done the good deed by coming straight to the cops but he is in for a big shocker. Slowly but surely, over the course of his interrogation, it emerges that after all, he might be the prime suspect in the case. “It’s always the boyfriend,” notes one of the cast members of the three-part docuseries. It doesn’t help his cause that he has confessed to the cops that Denise, his current girlfriend, was upset over the fact that he still had feelings for Andrea. This tiny bit of detail somehow makes things interesting.
The Gone Girl Conundrum
But things take a rather strange turn when Denise Huskins resurfaces from out of nowhere and is spotted outside her father’s house, more than 400 miles away from where she was kidnapped. Interestingly, she is unscarred, unperturbed and that, as you can imagine, causes the suspicion bell to ring pretty loud. “Police are now wondering: Is Huskins a real-life Gone Girl?” exclaims a new reporter from the archival footage, referring to David Fincher’s film which had debuted only months prior to the kidnapping. Aaron may have been the suspect at first but it suddenly looks like he was the victim after all.
What American Nightmare, despite its shortcomings, does is tactfully shift the focus onto a system that is hell-bent on vilifying a woman like Denise Huskins
How exactly does Gone Girl figure in the whole scheme of things? Well, remember Andrea and Aaron’s persisting feelings for her? The zealous media suddenly believes that Denise might have staged or orchestrated her own kidnapping, much like Rosamund Pike’s character in David Fincher’s 2014 film (based on Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel of the same name). Why? Well, apparently just so she could frame him for kidnapping and get back at him, who is supposedly the Ben Affleck of this puzzle. Yep, you heard that right.
But where was Denise all that time?
At first glance, Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins’ American Nightmare unfolds like most true-crime shows from Netflix’s roster. It has the beats, the rhythm and all the workings of a show that deals with harrowing real-life events that somehow lend themselves to ‘light consumption on TV’. In episode #1 of the three-part series, we learn of the kidnapping from Aaron’s point-of-view and it seems well set up that the rest of the show is going to add to the masala, while springing a surprise or two every now and then. And that’s when the director duo subverts our expectations by introducing Denise herself to us.
The second episode then takes a journey of its own. Denise Huskins is demystified in a single stroke and is allowed to share her own story in a manner that only she knows best. She tells us that she was, indeed, kidnapped and recounts every terrible detail of those 48 hours. She talks about being blindfolded by blacked-out swimming goggles by the men, about how one of them played French pop music in the other room and also about her kidnapper opening up to her about struggling with insomnia and PTSD. More importantly, Denise talks about her being raped not once but twice in those two days by him. And yet, remarkably, her story isn’t bought by authorities upon her release.
What is American Nightmare really about?
What American Nightmare, despite its shortcomings, does is tactfully shift the focus onto a system that is hell-bent on vilifying a woman like Denise Huskins. Morris and Higgins, who have previously collaborated on The Tinder Swindler (2022) for Netflix, raise a poignant question of how the authorities, including the cops, refuse to believe Denise and accuse both her and Aaron of committing a hoax. Denise’s account of the whole kidnapping accords completely with that of Aaron’s, but more importantly, she is able to corroborate with the help of actual physical evidence of a sexual assault. But the tag of being Gone Girl remains stuck to her for a long, long time.
American Nightmare could, therefore, be seen as an interesting ‘meta’ take on how cinema and true-crime conditions us all. It talks about confirmation bias and how despite strong evidence, Denise and Aaron are dragged across concrete just because someone out there is willing to bet on a movie plot more than a first-hand account. The series also sheds light on the inherent misogyny and prejudice against certain people and how it can be agonising to have the whole world against you.
True that the show could have benefitted from a better sense of auteurship and that the directors could have tried out a new narrative approach to tell the story. At times, American Nightmare feels a tad manipulative because of its over-the-top nature and the large number of talking heads with their two cents don’t help either. But, unlike many other true-crime shows out there, this one has its heart in the right place and that’s what counts the most.
