Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 2003)
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer is a 2003 follow-up documentary to the 1994 documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. The film follows Aileen Wuornos, female serial killer, through the last few months of her life, and goes back to revisit her past in order to get an understanding of why she ended up in the execution chamber.
The film was made by Nick Broomfield, a British documentary filmmaker who managed to develop a very good rapport with ‘America’s first female serial killer’ Aileen Wuornos whilst making a documentary about her murders in 1994. The original film is extremely significant, since it directly influenced Aileen’s case. The film exposed a group of police who were trying to make deals with Hollywood producers to sell Aileen’s story. This would later impact Aileen’s case, since it put into question whether her initial trial, and her case as a whole was legitimate. The follow up, Life and Death of a Serial Killer spends the first few minute of its runtime documenting the effect of the original film on Aileen’s case.
The film takes a much more humanistic approach to the case of Aileen Wuornos, framing her as a person who has been through some horrible things rather than just labelling her as a ‘serial killer’ and ‘a demon’.
Structurally, the film is quite all over the place, which does at points make it feel like a series of smaller bits of filmmaking put together. There isn’t as much cohesion as there probably could be. The film starts by showing how the original film was significant in Aileen’s case, ten moves on to discussing Aileen’s life, and ends with her final few days and her execution.
While the film does contain some of the tropes of the performative mode, I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as that. The film contains moments of performative documentary such as when Broomfield interviews Aileen, but also moments of the expository mode, participatory mode, and even the reflexive mode. Another example of how the 6 modes have a bit of a problem…
Personally I did enjoy learning about the case of Aileen Wuornos, but I found the documentary itself to be quite messy. It’s hard to make a follow-up film, and I think it’s clear that Broomfield struggled to combine commenting on the original film and exploring it’s impact, and delving deeper into Aileen Wuornos’ case. I found that the film jumped around quite a lot and lacked a single cohesive arc. I did still enjoy it though, and found the final chunk of the film that focuses on Aileen’s execution to be extremely effective.
3/5