Review of Three Identical Strangers (2018) by John M — 05 Aug 2018

You can't make this up. So this is a documentary that focuses on three guys who were separated at birth and adopted by different families. They cross paths nineteen years later because they all live in relatively close proximity to each other, and did I mention that they are identical triplets? How exactly does this happen? Now I was sold on this by the trailer, as it was nothing short of amazing and does exactly what an advertisement is supposed to do: it hooks you.

I knew nothing about this story, as it was before my time, and I can only imagine you would know about it if you read about it in a newspaper or watched daytime talk shows, as this predates the internet.

It's so far out there that if you saw it in some sort of movie that was written for the screen, you would likely write it off as being far-fetched. But no, miraculously, this really happened, and this is my type of documentary.

If you are going to grab me with your documentary, you have to do one of two things: you have to either enlighten me on a subject I was already interested in, or you have to keep things interesting with twists and turns in your story.

While the former will yield something like RBG (which is perfectly fine), the latter makes for more riveting cinema, and that is exactly what they have done with Three Identical Strangers. You are in this from start to finish, and unless you've either lived the story or scoured the Wikipedia page, you won't be able to tell where this story is going.

It could really land anywhere, and you always have the feeling like a shoe is about to drop in a revelation fashion, and more often than not, it does. This goes to some dark places even for just movies in general, and the fact that this actually happened just makes your skin crawl all the more.

Even out of the gates you like all of these guys, and that does make a difference in investing you in their story. This is always interesting, and I most definitely don't want to spoil any of the places that this is going to take you.

Unless you live in a major film market, chances are that you've already missed your chance of catching this in a theater, but when this pops up on Netflix like it inevitably will, it is one of the better documentaries that you can take 90 minutes to watch.