Review of Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) by Sheitan — 22 Sep 2013

Obvious spoiler warning.

The story that this documentary is based on deserves to be told and that Kuenne wanted to create a tribute to his friend is a touching idea. Unfortunately, he didn't do as good a job with it as he could have, simply because of his editing and the way he told the story. The source material is great and he has plenty of it, but instead of letting all the people he interviewed and all the documents tell this sad and infuriating story, Kuenne apparently felt the need to "enhance" his documentary with an annoying amount of effects and often frantic editing. Gut punches like the cut from the news about Zachary's disappearance to the report about his death (easily the most shocking moment of the documentary) are completely ruined by this decision. The worst part were the childish Monty-Pythonesque scenes that showed an image of whoever was quoted with a comical CGI mouth and the endless repetitions near the end, just in case the viewer didn't get the point during the first dozen times.

This should have been the masterpiece it deserved to be, but I guess that Kuenne couldn't control his emotions while putting the documentary together.