American Nightmare trailer: true crime docu-series comes to Netflix in two weeks

The true crime documentary series American Nightmare is set to reach the Netflix streaming service on January 17th, and with exactly two weeks to go until this one is available to watch a trailer for the show has arrived online. You can check it out in the embed above.

Directed by Bernadette Higgins (who previously produced the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler) and Felicity Morris (who directed The Tinder Swindler), American Nightmare has the following synopsis: After a home invasion and abduction, a young couple’s recounting of the events is too far fetched for the police to believe. Why did the victims seem so calm? Was it all a hoax? From the filmmakers behind The Tinder Swindler, this three-part docuseries unravels the consequences of our cultural rush to judgment, and the damage done when law enforcement decides the truth can’t possibly be true.

According to People, a press release said the documentary is a damning indictment of the confirmation bias too often at play in our criminal justice system. American Nightmare will challenge the assumptions of any true crime fan: How can we trust a news media so thirsty for clicks? Why are we still so reluctant to believe women? And what happens to victims when the institutions that are sworn to protect them… don’t?

More details on the true crime the documentary series covers can be found at the People link. While authorities were doubting the couple’s story, some started referring to the case as the “Gone Girl kidnapping, referencing the popular book and movie about a woman who faked her own kidnapping.”

Morris told Variety that she felt this case was worth making a documentary series about because, “It has this amazing woman who fell victim to a horrendous crime. But it’s about more than that. It’s about victims not being believed, about the institutions that are meant to protect us and yet they fall short. For her, in a terrible, terrible way.“

Are you interested in true crime documentaries, and will you be watching American Nightmare when it starts streaming on Netflix? What did you think of the trailer? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

I hadn’t heard of this case before, but I will probably be watching American Nightmare to learn more about it later this month.