SIX, a documentary written by Knoxville forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Smith, washes over the viewer with the power of shaped fiction as it traces, via interviews and court footage, the inexorable, "perfect storm" series of baby steps that led straight down a rural Tennessee road to the 1997 murder of a mother, father, young daughter, and the severe wounding of their baby boy, and the conviction of six Kentucky teens for the heinous crimes.
The story echoes with an eerie familiarity of such tragedies as Columbine and In Cold Blood as the weights pile up - piece by piece, error by error, coincidence by coincidence - on the side of tragedy until the counterweights that hold society together are overwhelmed and the unthinkable is revealed as cruel reality.
Technically, the film is sharply edited with high but unobtrusive production values and evocative, atmospheric music (primarily from Mobius Dick), as Smith, director Roman Karpynec, and creative consultant Glenn Reynolds, carefully, calmly, quietly piece together the mosaic of young lives out of step with their peers and the greater society, coming together, as outcasts are wont to do.
From broken homes, untethered by strong parental figures, the two central figures in the drama, depressed, bipolar Natasha Cornett, and depressed, hallucinatory Karen Howell, become fast friends and experiment with rejectionist values in clothing, sexuality, and allegedly, faith, as they dabble in Ouija board soothsaying, blood rituals and other trappings of witchcraft and Satanism.
The impression I gleaned from the interviews with the girls, friends, and family is that this was more general experimentation than an expression of any particular conviction, and a way to bond with fellow outcasts.
One thing leads to another - a reinforcing gang of six, revolving around nucleus Natasha comes together - and the gang heads off on a roadtrip to New Orleans, armed and dangerous. They interact at a rest stop with a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, fresh from a religious gathering, who proselytize to them. Some dystopian conjunction of religious zeal, spiritual trauma, small group dynamics and cackling FATE leads to the theft of the family's van and their subsequent shooting by the most unhinged of the teens, a boy named Jason. All six in the "gang" were convited of murder and sentenced to life without parole.
Could the violence have been prevented? I am less convinced than Smith, who frames the story thusly on the film's excellent website:
- This film unravels the chain of events that led to this tragedy; a tragedy that turns out to have been so thoroughly preventable that it is astonishing that it was never prevented. Some missed opportunities include:
Article comments
1 - NERO
Nice article. I agree completely. Like you I felt that Jason was the bad apple that spoiled the whole bunch. After watching the movie I didn't feel that Karen Howell or Crystal Sturgill were capable of murder at all. Natasha Cornett comes across like a troublemaker and a drama seeker, but not a killer.
I think the Satanic stuff was overemphasized as well
2 - Klaatu
I have seen two of these cases personally. I was a Legal Asst and 4 kids murdered one of their mothers and the other case was 5 kids murdered a young man....
3 - CJ
I think that it's a shame that the innocent people in this case were sentenced like they were. The system shouldn't base it's decissions on how much money a person has, but instead on the case at hand. We all know that this wouldn't have happened if they would've had the money to defend themselves. The system is unfair and fails in so many ways.