20-year-old college student Amanda Knox was wrongfully arrested for the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007. The two were studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, when Kercher was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered in their shared home.
“The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” a true-story drama series on Hulu, follows Amanda’s journey throughout this unimaginable situation. Not only is the show about her multiple court trials and almost four years imprisoned, but it’s also about her struggle to regain her identity and live her life after all of the trauma she faced.
While almost half of the show is in Italian, it’s easy to follow along with the subtitles as the plot of the story keeps your eyes glued to the screen.
You may think this is simply a story about a girl who was wrongfully convicted, it is far more complicated than that.
This series dives into the issues of the justice system, culture clashes, the power of the media, and the struggle of reclaiming freedom when it’s wrongfully taken away.However, unless you are a big fan of suspenseful true-stories, this show can seem pretty slow paced.
During the first episode, the plot seems to be moving very fast but as you get towards the middle of the show, it slows down drastically. It’s not that the episodes are boring, but the producers simply spent a great deal of time going into all of the details of what Amanda endured.
As far as the characters and acting go, I was unsure at first when I saw that Grace Van Patten was cast as Amanda Knox. With every episode, she exceeded my expectations.
I had only seen her in “Tell Me Lies” and wasn’t sure how she was going to play a character completely different from this other one that I was used to, but she outdid herself.
Grace takes the watcher on an emotional journey as she transitions from portraying a normal 20-year-old study abroad student, to a petrified, broken young woman caught in an international nightmare.
The show effectively uses bilingual scripts to illustrate how the language barrier worsened Amanda’s plight. If you think it’s difficult to follow along with the subtitles translating Italian to English, imagine Amanda trying to keep up with this situation in real life.
Amanda’s narration can be excessive though. While it is helpful that the viewer is given an exclusive look into her inner thoughts, it could be more alluring to figure out some elements naturally.
Overall, if you have been tired of the recent, somewhat unrealistic dramas like “My Life With The Walter Boys” or “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” I would recommend watching this show to switch up your usual rotation.
Although it’s not a particularly lighthearted story, it’s compelling to see how easily an innocent person’s life can be drastically changed by both the media and the justice system.
Rating: 4/5