Critic Reviews
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77
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
27(79%)
mixed
6(18%)
negative
1(3%)
Showing 34 Critic Reviews
Dec 17, 2015
100
It's as engrossing as they come, impactful and devastating, and it left me with a hollowed-out despondence generally treatable only with alcohol and ranting.
Dec 17, 2015
100
Judging by the first four episodes, though, it’s not only a gripping true-crime story, it’s also the most moral one I’ve seen in a long time.
Dec 18, 2015
100
It’s a completely hypnotic enterprise--a nightmare you are compelled to remain within, to see what happens.
Jan 4, 2016
91
Do expect an absorbing tale of justice rendered but not necessarily justice served. Its star players have no formal acting training. But for better or worse, they all look born to play their real-life roles in another true crime drama that knocks fiction for a loop.
Dec 15, 2015
90
“Riveting” is an overused, even lazy, term in criticism, but it’s hard to think of one that better applies to Making a Murderer, Netflix’s stunning 10-part documentary.
Dec 18, 2015
90
What it lacks in terms of sensationalism and gloss, it makes up for by possessing that very quality every Netflix show aspires to have: bingeability. The series begins slowly, but after grasping enough names and faces, you start feeling a sense of total immersion.
Dec 18, 2015
90
It’s hard to hit pause on Making a Murderer once it’s rolling through the queue.
Dec 21, 2015
90
It's a sprawling small-town saga that, nonetheless, feels lived-in and intimate. And even as it succumbs to some of true crime's greatest faults, it's always less interested in the gruesomeness of the crime than in the impossibility of finding the truth, something that serves it well. This is grim television, but it's also necessary television.
Dec 23, 2015
90
As far as longform journalism goes, it’s something of a masterstroke. Ricciardi and Demos deliver a decade’s worth of assembled surveillance footage, interviews, press conferences, police interrogations, courtroom testimonies and more, so much information in fact that the series feels like it’s racing to deliver it all even with a 10-hour-plus runtime (Making a Murderer feels like it could have gone on for hours more).
Dec 17, 2015
85
Every bit as gripping as this year's earlier docu-series hit, Making a Murderer is the anti-The Jinx.
