If there’s one thing that people love, it’s a mystery. Since the dawn of the internet there have been message board, websites, and social media groups dedicated to the pursuit of answers to the world’s strangest mysteries and cold cases. Sometimes these internet sleuths have been able to crack some of the most bizarre cases facing law enforcement agents, but the problem with armchair detectives is the overwhelming lack of professional training, and usually an inability to look at things impartially, which can just as easily lead to wasting of police time and resources following wild speculation.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is a Netflix docuseries consisting of four episodes that concern themselves with the strange disappearance and death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who seemingly vanished whilst staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Directed by Joe Berlinger, the series investigates the history of the Cecil Hotel and the area of L.A. it resides in, the infamous Skid Row; as well as delves deep into the internet sleuth culture that attempted to find out what really happened to Lam.
Whilst a documentary double bill isn’t something you often hear of; I honestly think that a double bill of this and the 2019 Netflix docuseries ‘Don’t Fuck With Cats’ would really compliment each other quite nicely as they both put internet detectives on the spot. With the case of Justin Lin in Don’t Fuck With Cats, sleuths were able to piece together clues left by the killer, Luca Magnotta, far quicker than law enforcement was able to, and he was tracked down in just a matter of days despite completely baffling detectives at the time. With The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, internet sleuths are presented in a far less glamorous light, showcasing the harm they pose to investigations and the pain they can inflict along the way.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is a Netflix docuseries consisting of four episodes that concern themselves with the strange disappearance and death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who seemingly vanished whilst staying at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Directed by Joe Berlinger, the series investigates the history of the Cecil Hotel and the area of L.A. it resides in, the infamous Skid Row; as well as delves deep into the internet sleuth culture that attempted to find out what really happened to Lam.
Whilst a documentary double bill isn’t something you often hear of; I honestly think that a double bill of this and the 2019 Netflix docuseries ‘Don’t Fuck With Cats’ would really compliment each other quite nicely as they both put internet detectives on the spot. With the case of Justin Lin in Don’t Fuck With Cats, sleuths were able to piece together clues left by the killer, Luca Magnotta, far quicker than law enforcement was able to, and he was tracked down in just a matter of days despite completely baffling detectives at the time. With The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, internet sleuths are presented in a far less glamorous light, showcasing the harm they pose to investigations and the pain they can inflict along the way.
For those who are unaware of the disappearance and death of Elisa Lam, here’s a quick rundown of the facts. Lam was a twenty-one-year-old student studying at the University of British Columbia and had taken her first trip abroad to the United States in January of 2013. Checking in at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles on January 28th, Lam was reported missing on February 1st after failing to make contact with her parents back in Canada. On February 13th Lam’s body was discovered inside one of the hotel’s rooftop water cistern’s following a large search operation and public information appeal that garnered international media attention.
The autopsy performed on February 21st found Lam’s cause of death to be accidental drowning following a psychotic episode brought on by her bipolar disorder, for which she had stopped taking medication whilst travelling.
So how do you create an unsolved mystery style documentary around a case that has been supposedly solved and closed? Well, there are so many peculiarities surrounding Lam’s disappearance and the manner in which she died that many claim to believe that Lam was murdered by either a hotel staff member or guest, or that she somehow became involved with some of Skid Row’s unsavoury locals, or that Lam became caught up in some kind of police or government cover-up.
The way the documentary conveys the story I feel is incredibly clever. The first episode is primarily used to establish what kind of environment the Cecil Hotel, and the surrounding area of Skid Row is. It charts the hotel’s history back to its erection in the early twentieth century, and how following the great depression became a hotspot for prostitution and drug use. How in the decades that followed, the surrounding area which became known as Skid Row was where all of the city’s undesirables were put by police, and to this day are effectively penned in with no way to leave. This is all communicated by former detectives, the manager of the Cecil Hotel at the time of Lam’s death, and local historians. It's all done in a professional way, by the people who were actually there, or whose job it is to know this information.
But then comes the introduction of Lam into the story, and Berlinger brings in a number of other voices that become more prevalent over the ‘trusted’ individuals interviewed so far. These are the internet sleuths who were prominent figures for the online discourse surrounding the mystery of Lam’s death such as Youtuber’s and bloggers. It’s not until the final episode where the voices of those people that introduced us to the hotel and the area are given the spotlight again, as it seemingly turns its attention away from Lam and the hotel, revealing its true colours. This is not a true crime documentary, this is a documentary about internet detectives, using a true crime as a framing device.
The longer we spend with the internet sleuths the more outrageous their theories and claims to know the real truth become, and it does ultimately end with many of them looking back at their claims with nearly a decade away from the case to understand how crazy they sound, and realising how far they were willing to fabricate total fiction just to make the case fit their desired outcome.
The autopsy performed on February 21st found Lam’s cause of death to be accidental drowning following a psychotic episode brought on by her bipolar disorder, for which she had stopped taking medication whilst travelling.
So how do you create an unsolved mystery style documentary around a case that has been supposedly solved and closed? Well, there are so many peculiarities surrounding Lam’s disappearance and the manner in which she died that many claim to believe that Lam was murdered by either a hotel staff member or guest, or that she somehow became involved with some of Skid Row’s unsavoury locals, or that Lam became caught up in some kind of police or government cover-up.
The way the documentary conveys the story I feel is incredibly clever. The first episode is primarily used to establish what kind of environment the Cecil Hotel, and the surrounding area of Skid Row is. It charts the hotel’s history back to its erection in the early twentieth century, and how following the great depression became a hotspot for prostitution and drug use. How in the decades that followed, the surrounding area which became known as Skid Row was where all of the city’s undesirables were put by police, and to this day are effectively penned in with no way to leave. This is all communicated by former detectives, the manager of the Cecil Hotel at the time of Lam’s death, and local historians. It's all done in a professional way, by the people who were actually there, or whose job it is to know this information.
But then comes the introduction of Lam into the story, and Berlinger brings in a number of other voices that become more prevalent over the ‘trusted’ individuals interviewed so far. These are the internet sleuths who were prominent figures for the online discourse surrounding the mystery of Lam’s death such as Youtuber’s and bloggers. It’s not until the final episode where the voices of those people that introduced us to the hotel and the area are given the spotlight again, as it seemingly turns its attention away from Lam and the hotel, revealing its true colours. This is not a true crime documentary, this is a documentary about internet detectives, using a true crime as a framing device.
The longer we spend with the internet sleuths the more outrageous their theories and claims to know the real truth become, and it does ultimately end with many of them looking back at their claims with nearly a decade away from the case to understand how crazy they sound, and realising how far they were willing to fabricate total fiction just to make the case fit their desired outcome.
I’ve read a number of negative reviews online about this documentary claiming it’s nothing more than giving a platform to conspiracy theorists, but I argue it’s exactly the opposite. The documentary never entertains what they claim, and actively makes them out to be the villains in the final episode when it is revealed that they actively destroyed people’s lives who had nothing to do with the case just because they were desperately trying to make connections wherever they could.
Where Don’t Fuck With Cats was a celebration of the ingenuity and efficiency of a band of internet sleuths, The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is total condemnation of that community for doing nothing but hinder the case, and damage the livelihoods of completely innocent people for their own selfish needs.
Something I did very much appreciate about the documentary was that it took the time to close out the whole proceeding with reminding viewers that Elisa Lam was a real person. That throughout this entire ordeal that effectively stripped her of her individual identity to paint her as some prize to claim for the first person to solve the ‘mystery’, she was a young woman who was passionate about literature, travel, and had her whole life ahead of her.
I must say I was genuinely captivated by The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, and I highly recommend it to people in search of a good crime documentary. Whilst the series has its critics for everything it isn’t (I read one review that slammed it for being about Elisa Lam and not any of the Cecil Hotel’s numerous other death’s which I found extremely stupid), looking at it for what it is, which is a cautionary tale about internet sleuths and the dangers they can pose if left unchecked, I thought The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was genuinely gripping stuff.
Where Don’t Fuck With Cats was a celebration of the ingenuity and efficiency of a band of internet sleuths, The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is total condemnation of that community for doing nothing but hinder the case, and damage the livelihoods of completely innocent people for their own selfish needs.
Something I did very much appreciate about the documentary was that it took the time to close out the whole proceeding with reminding viewers that Elisa Lam was a real person. That throughout this entire ordeal that effectively stripped her of her individual identity to paint her as some prize to claim for the first person to solve the ‘mystery’, she was a young woman who was passionate about literature, travel, and had her whole life ahead of her.
I must say I was genuinely captivated by The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, and I highly recommend it to people in search of a good crime documentary. Whilst the series has its critics for everything it isn’t (I read one review that slammed it for being about Elisa Lam and not any of the Cecil Hotel’s numerous other death’s which I found extremely stupid), looking at it for what it is, which is a cautionary tale about internet sleuths and the dangers they can pose if left unchecked, I thought The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was genuinely gripping stuff.