Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014

The film triumphs in making viewers feel the true loss of the lives of people we never knew.

Viewers can get depressed, infuriated or defensive. In the end, Requiem makes no overt political or ideological statement because it doesn’t have to. It’s about madness.

Nick Doob and Shari Cookson’s decision to use such “found footage” makes their film at once immediate and distressingly distanced, as it offers images both ordinary and specific, families and individuals posing for photos, their faces turned to the camera.

The stories are all awful. They leave you feeling angry, depressed, and hopeless that anything can be done about gun violence in America. But Requiem for the Dead also feels manipulative in a reality TV sort of way.

Requiem doesn’t delve deeply enough to be anything but a blame-the-gun film.... The film is less helpful on the hard questions than it thinks it is, and watching it feels more exploitative than revelatory.