Devil's Knot

In a notorious case in Arkansas in 1993, a trio of teenagers who became known as the "West Memphis Three" were jailed for the murder of three eight-year-old boys. The teens were convicted on highly questionable evidence, amid claims of a witch hunt and a tabloid frenzy that hinted at satanic ritual, and director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) sets much of this dramatic retelling around the initial court case. However, the film runs the risk of fogging the truth by moulding the narrative into an exercise in emotional button-pushing. Although beautifully shot and with powerful performances from Colin Firth (as a private investigator) and Reese Witherspoon (as the mother of one of the murdered boys), Devil's Knot feels incomplete, the script ending long before the subsequent appeals and revelations that continued to grab headlines. Documentaries such as the Paradise Lost trilogy and West of Memphis have examined the events more fully, and with the attention to detail such a serious criminal injustice warrants.