As a cinephile with over three decades of film and television viewing under my belt, I must admit that Michael Bay’s foray into true crime with “Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior” has left me both perplexed and entertained. The series, which premiered on Max in 2024, is a departure from traditional true-crime documentaries, with Bay injecting his signature style of over-the-top spectacle into the genre.
Action director Michael Bay ventured into the realm of true crime with “Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior,” a new series on Max, which premiered on September 2, 2024. Famous for creating grand-scale action movies like The Transformers, Bay has unexpectedly adapted his high-octane filmmaking style to television, offering viewers an unprecedented perspective on criminals through a variety of innovative techniques.
Instead of sticking to the conventional style of one-on-one interviews found in many true-crime series, Bay has given Born Evil a unique touch by incorporating cinematic techniques typically used in grand productions. This show uses dramatic reenactments and eye-catching visual effects to help viewers understand the minds of its villainous characters. While these methods aren’t always successful, Bay offers a fresh perspective on true-crime TV that stays true to his signature style.
Who Is Michael Bay?
Michael Bay is a popular Hollywood film director from the United States, who initially gained recognition by creating music videos for various artists such as Tina Turner, Wilson Phillips, Lionel Richie, Meatloaf, among others. He then moved on to directing films, making his big-screen debut with the successful 1995 buddy-cop action movie “Bad Boys.” Known for favoring style over substance, Bay’s bold and dynamic filmmaking style was further solidified through high-budget studio productions like “The Rock,” “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Bad Boys II,” and others.
2007 saw Michael Bay revamp his brand through “Transformers,” kickstarting a successful series of animated films. While “Born Evil” marks Bay’s initial dive into television direction, he has previously produced several TV shows such as “Billion Dollar Wreck,” “Black Sails,” “Horror at the Cecil Hotel,” “The Last Ship,” “The Purge,” and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.” The only reality TV show among these is “Billion Dollar Wreck,” which holds the lowest IMDb rating (4.8) of Bay’s television productions. However, the less-than-successful “Billion Dollar Wreck” didn’t deter Bay from venturing back into reality TV with the flamboyantly stylish true-crime series “Born Evil,” a visually captivating Max original that showcases Bay’s audacity.
What Is Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior About?
Premiering on September 2, 2024, the original Max true-crime docuseries titled “Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior” consists of 8 episodes. This series is overseen by Michael Bay, who directs four episodes himself. Unlike conventional crime documentaries that explore separate cases in each episode, this series is linked by a religious theme. The catalyst for the story revolves around Hadden Clark, a man with a criminal past, accused of abducting Michelle Dorr, a six-year-old girl, and Laura Houghteling, a 23-year-old woman, at different times in the past.
In this scenario, it becomes clear that Clark’s spiritual beliefs are significant when he asserts that his cellmate is Jesus Christ. This extraordinary claim forms the basis for a strange tactic to extract confessions about additional crimes. As part of the dramatic portrayal, an actor named John David Bulla, playing a character called Jack Truitt, is brought in. When Clark admits that Jesus has instructed him to commit wrongdoings, Jack assumes the role of Jesus and communicates with the prisoner, offering spiritual guidance.
How Born Evil Shows a Different Look at Serial Killers?
As a true-crime enthusiast, I can’t help but notice that Bay’s reenactments are anything but conventional. His unique approach, which I like to call his ‘cosplay of crime,’ is filled with over-the-top visual elements that seem to have leapt straight from the sets of his blockbuster movies. For instance, Jesus strikes dramatic poses under booming church set soundtracks, a child actor portraying Michelle in a questionable light, flashy knife sequences leading up to a panicked rabbit escape, excessive aerial shots of victim neighborhoods, and numerous other techniques that border on the tasteless, all serving to exaggerate Clark’s sensational crimes. However, instead of heightening the impact, it leaves me feeling more bewildered than enlightened.
The best true-crime documentaries often employ a somber, straightforward review of the facts by a panel of experts and interviewees. Bay strips all that away to bombard viewers with a visual assault of the senses, cramming the screen with flashy distractions that often do more harm than good. One glaring example includes the unneeded depiction of Clark proving his claim that he eats human body parts, replete with the actor playing the criminal chugging a gigantic jug of blood stored beneath his cell bed. It’s tasteless, tacky, and untoward, and adds more shock value than any true insight into Clark’s motives. Yet for Bay, it’s an opportunity to crank up the style dial to 10, forgoing the substantive weight that acclaimed true-crime docs lean on.
In a departure from the norm for true crime shows, Bay’s presentation of Clark in Born Evil is strikingly unique, yet consistently adheres to his signature style that leans towards spectacle over substance. This is evident in the provocative use of an image of the devil on Clark’s mother’s head, a tactic intended to suggest the criminal’s evil nature but perceived as cheap and self-serving. Despite its noble effort to break away from the traditional formula, Born Evil succumbs to Bay’s well-known cinematic excesses, drawing attention away from the central crime and focusing more on himself and his style rather than on Clark and his victims.
Born Evil is available to stream on Max.
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2024-09-08 00:31