SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Jonathan Ley This is a truly amazing piece of work. Creepy and bizarre yet always humane. Firstly, yes it is a documentary. But a documentary does not have to be some guy following his subject with a camera. The verity form of documentary film-making is a great and valid one but it is not right for every subject and it is not the only documentary form. Marsh's film is a hybrid between documentary and fiction film-making. He uses dramatic reconstructions skillfully, inter cutting with contemporary, reportage material. The film is a series of snapshots, reports of bizarre events, murders, suicides and strange customs taken from contemporaneous newspaper reports of the time. It aims to provide an alternative view of an area's history by looking beneath the surface at the strange footnotes of history which somehow frequently manage to get lost in the history books. And it is absolutely stunning to look at. The dramatic reconstructions are shot in dreamlike black and white, filmed to mirror the technical conventions of the time. The contemporary footage is similarly beautiful - a filmed photo story of the town today. The film is stunning enough on its own terms but when you consider that they shot all this on a low, TV documentary budget it becomes awe-inspiring. As to the dramatic structure, the film makes it quite clear at the beginning that the stories took place between 1890 and 1900. The use of the five chapters themed by the seasons (it, tellingly, begins and ends in Winter) is intended to link the stories thematically and by subject matter. It is like the ages of man - the early stories involve children, then adolescents, then adults, then old people, etc... True, the blurb on the DVD box is slightly misleading - it suggests that the film will unravel the mystery of why all these things happened in this one town and its surrounding areas. That is not Marsh's fault and his film should not be criticised for not delivering what it never intended to. It is instead a record of some truly strange happenings. Why did they happen? Why does weird stuff continue to happen? In his highly enlightening commentary Marsh explains that he was interested in drawing parallels between then and now and I think his film exceeds in doing this brilliantly. It is a great idea, to examine life by looking at the ways in which we die. Wisconsin Death Trip is a sad, strange, beautiful, disturbing and blackly comic little masterpiece and I urge you to check it out.

FilmOtaku Directed by James Marsh, 'Wisconsin Death Trip' chronicles a period of Wisconsin history in which there were an inordinate amount of murders, commitments to the mental asylum and general 'colorful' doings. While there are some photographs from the time period used, the lion's share of this film utilizes footage akin to dramatic recreations. The first time I saw the film 'Wisconsin Death Trip', I believe that I was more taken with the fact that it was something unusual, and not a 'regular' documentary, and I let the gross lack of substance be overridden by the obscure subject matter. After seeing it now for the second time almost two years later, I still feel that the subject matter is compelling, but I remembered more clearly that I left the film the first time with a sense of emptiness and more questions than I normally feel comfortable with after sitting through 76 minutes of film. There are many shortcomings and manipulation of facts in this film. The narration (by Ian Holm) tells us that the focus is on Black River Falls, a very small town in northern Wisconsin. Yet, many of the goings-on didn't take place remotely near Black River Falls. There are stories of murder and mayhem in Kenosha, for example – Kenosha being a good three and half hours (minimum) by the interstate from Black River Falls. Also confusing is both the claim that the events described took place over a nine year period, yet the presentation leads us to believe that they actually took place in the course of a year. Not entirely important, unless one is trying to establish the magnitude of these events; obviously the impact is much larger when presented in one-ninth the time they actually took place. And in regard to the events in question, they, coupled with some very striking and creepy photographs, provide some very intriguing and creepy insight. Unfortunately, the filmmaker did not provide us with any kind of outlet as to why these events were occurring when they hadn't before, nor does he give us a lot of background for the audience to hypothesize for him. While the subject matter is very interesting, 'Wisconsin Death Trip' falls far short of what it could have been. There is a book of the same title by Michael Lesy which perhaps explores some of the issues which don't get explained in the film, but unfortunately, when a film is presented as a documentary, the onus should not be on the audience to do the research that should have been included in the first place. This is a real niche film that is probably going to appeal most to Wisconsin historians, but as someone who both lives in the state and is extremely interested in both Wisconsin history and lore, I was not remotely impressed. 4/10Shelly

deejayjd That's what I was doing 30 minutes into this film, sleeping. My friend lasted a little longer than me but he was out at the 45 minute mark. This film could have lasted 20 minutes and you would get the point, instead it goes through each season with the same stuff going on. I love independent films because they are usually much better than big productions, but sometimes there are duds, and this is one. It would be more suited for the TV. Save your money and yourself.

Karen Green (klg19) This gripping documentary looks at events, many of them dealing with homicide, suicide, and mental illness, in the life of the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, during the nineteenth century.If you think we are presently living in an unprecedentedly violent age, it will be enlightening to see the number of husbands who shot wives, wives who shot husbands, lovers who shot each other, parents who killed children, and children who killed whomever, in this sleepy midwestern town, filled with hard-working citizens of German and Norwegian descent.Added into the mix is a remarkable number of mentally ill or drug-addicted people, notably Mary Sweeney, the "Wisconsin Window-Smasher," who destroyed tens of thousands of dollars worth of windows across the state, while taking cocaine to "steady her nerves."The film is a combination of still photographs from the era and black-and-white set-piece recreations of the incidents, narrated beautifully by Ian Holm. The viewer should be warned, however, that it is not until the very last frame of the credits that we learn that not all the photographs shown necessarily correspond to the people in the incidents described.A great work of social history, exploring a side of life many people prefer to ignore.