Devil's Knot review

Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan may have occasionally frustrated us in the past (2009’s Chloe comes to mind), but he's never confounded us like this. How could one of cinema's most distinctive voices be responsible for this anonymous docudrama detailing a story already told at least twice?

Here, the West Memphis Three – Arkansas teenage outsiders unjustly tried and wrongfully convicted for grisly child murders – suffer fresh indignity: the actors playing them simply seem to be regurgitating courtroom transcripts. And why is the focus less on them than Colin Firth’s private investigator? Egoyan listlessly retraces the trial's tragic course but uncovers nothing new about human nature in the belaboured process.