Reenactments have become all the rage in true-crime docuseries

Los Angeles Times

Errol Morris helped pioneer the documentary reenactment with his acclaimed 1988 film The Thin Blue Line. "Once anathema, the brand of highly stylized re-creation Morris pioneered is now ubiquitous, particularly on the small screen," says Meredith Blake of the device has been used in McMillions, The Keepers, The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez and I'll Be Gone in the Dark. "As long-form true crime docuseries have surged in popularity over the last half-decade, so has the use of impressionistic re-creations providing a fragmented look at the past rather than a literal retelling of events...Unlike the hokey TV reenactments of yesteryear — with their wooden acting, bargain-basement production values and the disclaimer 'REENACTMENT' often written across the bottom of the screen — these dramatizations feature lush cinematography, artful lighting, period-accurate costumes and meticulous production design. There is typically little or no audible dialogue. Faces are often obscured or out of the frame entirely, and, like the Burger King milkshake in The Thin Blue Line, crucial objects appear in close-up: a piano decorated with Christmas lights, a McDonald’s game piece, a floppy wide-brimmed hat." Morris, who appears on FX's new docuseries A Wilderness of Error, says of reenactments: "I like the idea that reenactments don’t tell you what happened, they take you deeper and deeper into the mystery. They give you a way of thinking about the mystery, not of resolving the mystery.”