This 2011 documentary by acclaimed German director Werner Herzog has drawn comparisons with American novelist Truman Capote’s 1966 classic In Cold Blood. For that project, Capote travelled from New York to small town Kansas to cover the police investigation into a quadruple murder and the subsequent trial of two co-accused for the grisly crime.
Here, Herzog travels to small-town Texas to interview a 28-year old inmate awaiting execution for a triple murder. He also interviews a relative of the victims, along with a prison chaplain and a former executioner — all in an effort to explore why people, as individual criminals, and as a society intent on exacting retribution, kill.
Into the Abyss screens tonight at the RPL Theatre at 7 p.m. Here’s the trailer.
