Before I go on, this is where I must preface that I have seen only the two episodes that Netflix provided, and am reviewing the four-part “Evil Genius” without knowing where it all ends. But as someone more than ready to find a new Netflix obsession, the project always felt like it wanted to be simply shocking, instead of challenging. It feels like a gravely missed opportunity, given the fascinating people, the events, and the various ideas of humanity that lurk around this true story. From writer/director Barbara Schroeder and executive producers Jay & Mark Duplass, “Evil Genius” is the case of true crime storytelling that can be too easily classified as merely satiating the supply-and-demand for such unconscionable tales.
There are a lot of interesting documentary subjects--one might even call them characters--within this story that is about much more than Wells’ murder. There’s Wells, who seemed like a nice, isolated man and loved his mother. But then there are the two larger-than-life people who could give this story its title, the unpredictable and imposing Bill Rothstein, and a woman who was known as a master manipulator, Majorie Diehl-Armstrong. We learn about her history of dead boyfriends, and her state of mental illness. Then we we find out about a body in her freezer.
An overall fuzzy image comes together of these people who live on the fringe of society, connecting with others through some wild relationships, and the series creates a striking idea of what people do in their quiet lives. But “Evil Genius” doesn’t encourage a deeper look into its people, instead relishing in the footage that they have of them, and showing their outsider nature as if they were narrative archetypes albeit with striking physical presences.
The case that unites them is undoubtedly bananas, but Schroeder’s take can be as enthralling as reading a long police procedural. In talking head interviews, cops and FBI agents recount the different parts of the investigation with great detail; the documentary’s method of pure information flattening the case’s many inherently striking aspects. “Evil Genius” is very much about savoring the facts, which makes for a few compelling passages about the highly unusual mechanics of the bomb that was attached to Wells. In other cases, the attention to archive findings and evidence treasures holds back the story’s rhythm, as with lengthy sequences that don’t make Bill or Marjorie more interesting, they just make them more time-consuming.
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