Can I Tell You a Secret review Terrifying Netflix documentary investigates the crimes of a real-life Kabir Singh

"An online stalker who not only broke into the lives of numerous women but also destroyed their relationships drove them to the verge of insanity. In the recent Netflix true-crime documentary Can I Tell You a Secret, three of these women painfully share their stories. It might have easily been a full-length movie, but it's been split into two parts, maybe to appease viewers who want episodic ""content."" In either case, the total viewing duration will only be roughly one hundred minutes. Liz, Zoe, and Lia are three energetic young women who are seemingly randomly targeted by a malevolent stranger who starts sending them unsettling messages that they initially ignore. They don't start to worry until the texts take on an increasingly ominous tone. One of them learns that the stalker, posing as her, had texted her friend's father indecently. Another woman finds out that the stalker sent photos to an older male acquaintance after obtaining them from a boudoir session in which she had taken part. The women eventually discover that they are unable to escape an ever-more-stifling nightmare. The police are involved, but they can't help enough because of a variety of factors, including their lack of equipment or lack of enthusiasm. The program includes statements from many police departments as on-screen text, despite only having one law enforcement officer on camera.

This decision is distinctly un-cinematic. Can I Tell You a Secret isn't the most ambitious documentary, as you may have already surmised from the fact that it tells the story in great detail and with minimal psychological depth. The filmmakers use glowing electrical cables to depict the stalker's ever-expanding network of influence; the connections light up in response to messages sent and received. It's comparable to a financial documentary that illustrates stock market volatility with graphs and floating figures. The fact that the stalker is originally portrayed as a sort of slasher movie villain—he sounds a lot like the Ghostface killer from the Scream movies—helps to emphasize just how deadly he is. However, we aren't given a clear picture of the women's personalities or the ways in which their experiences affected their lives. It certainly had to have been terrifying. However, the program lacks a particular viewpoint. Too frequently, it feels like these folks live in a different reality from our own, even though the purpose of something like this should ideally be to draw attention to how vulnerable everyone is to cyberstalking. Can I Tell You a Secret takes the increasingly popular decision to forgo having as many talking heads as possible in favor of crude dramatic recreations. By having the victims reenact key incidents from their harassment, they have further cut expenses."