This story does include spoilers

Jewish director Joe Berlinger doesn’t take a partial swing when it comes to true crime stories. For example, he made two separate features about Ted Bundy, one of them being a film starring Zac Efron (who also comes from a Jewish family) as the infamous killer. He’s directed 15 different television documentaries, and a handful of feature films. Suffice to say, the guy has a thing for murder of all kinds, often digging deep into the story and coming away with a terrifying yet fascinating glimpse of the human species. 

But that’s not even half of the Berlinger appeal, something made even more evident by his latest docu-series for Netflix, “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.” Elisa Lam went missing at one of the most notorious hotels in the country-one located right in the middle of Skid Row-and these four episodes document the search for her, along with the toll it took on several parties.

But what particular strategy does Berlinger use to stand out with his investigative tales of lives lost and the twisted reasons for their sudden demise? The Lam case doesn’t have the dramatic power of Bundy’s life, but the auteur keeps your eyes glued to the screen. What is his thing? Along with a few other insights, here are my five takeaways from Berlinger’s latest. 

**While I tell you Berlinger was the honoree at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in 2017, remember reading past this point will include SPOILERS. All good? Thanks and please proceed.**

Blending the real and the fake together

Berlinger uses a sophisticated blend of reenactments, theatrical film-type music, and storytelling methods to make the viewer think they are watching a movie. Just one that happens to be very real. The use of actors in his films never distracts from the juice of the story, often just pulling you in further. With “The Cecil Hotel,” you have many different accounts of what happened to Lam. The detectives, journalists, and witnesses weigh in. But so do the internet sleuths, true crime buffs who dug their teeth too far into the Lam case, even ruining a man’s life in the process. So you have the revisiting via performance, real camera footage, an eclectic array of interviews, and a bizarre tale that was about way more than one girl going missing. That’s the Berlinger way. 

The shadiest-looking hotel manager ever in Amy Price

If “Better Call Saul” star Rhea Seehorn doesn’t play Price, who was the manager at the Cecil Hotel for ten years, something in Hollywood is broken. Throughout the entire docu-series, viewers will grow increasingly weary of this slightly off-looking yet seemingly sincere woman. I don’t think she or the hotel had a thing to do with it. Honestly. But due to how crazy she looks and how aggressive she is in certain scenes about what did and didn’t happen, people assume Price is dirty, possibly even involved in Lam’s murder somehow. After managing one of the worst hotels in the world for ten years, my bet is we all look a little demented like Price. She’s very interesting, but most likely innocent. Still, Get Seehorn her Emmy please by giving her this role to play. (Paging Berlinger)

Internet sleuths can be pretty dangerous themselves

Due to key footage being placed on the internet-showing an erratic-acting Lam moving in and out of an elevator, like she was being followed or chased-the Lam case exploded with popularity, attracting sleuths from all over the world. What is a sleuth, exactly? It’s a civilian who addictively investigates true crime, becoming a badge-less detective in a way. So the elevator video goes viral, sparking debates about seconds being deleted, the video being altered by Price and her staff, and a hundred other theories.

But one particular thread, involving a gothic singer whose video shows a helpless woman running away, got out of hand. Morbid, the man’s stage name, stayed at the Cecil Hotel one time and sang songs full of death notes. So the sleuths stretched those thin clues, and brought the world down on Morbid. He lost sponsors, business, and basically his livelihood due to some night owl mavericks casting him out without a shred of evidence. Let’s look into Blind Melon next. Possibly Aerosmith. These are the people we need to worry about. In other news, who has that much time on their hands? 

Berlinger’s latest is BLOATED

This could have been a documentary. A normal two-hour one. A case that left more questions than answers to the REAL cops didn’t require three hours and thirty-three minutes to flesh out. So much time is wasted on these internet sleuths drawing ridiculous conclusions, pulling from their own lives and trying to treat a Facebook Group page like it’s some 9-1-1 dispatch unit. Unlike “The Night Stalker” Netflix docu-series, which focused on the detectives and victims instead of the killer, Berlinger’s “Cecil Hotel” basically hands a microphone to keyboard detectives. Bad idea. 

The real takeaway of this documentary is and should be mental health

The disillusionment that the majority of Americans have for mental health is embarrassing and quite frankly sad. In order to find out what happened to Elisa Lam, you had to know who she was and what she battled. Reading an internet diary isn’t going to give you all the clues one needs, but Lam’s poetic style of self-introspection left a few breadcrumbs. More than that, the detectives who actually investigated the evidence and facts, speaking to Lam’s family and finding out what prescription medication she was taking (or not taking), found answers in the only spot: the victim herself. Lam left all the clues right there. A young bipolar woman without her medication in the absolute worst place at the darkest time. She had a breakdown, tried to hide in a water tank, and accidentally drowned. It’s painfully sad, but true. 

What hurts about this tale is the fact that people tried to sensationalize a case just so they could get more pageviews, more attention, and drag out an investigation online, which can be the worst playground. Here, there was no killer. Just a condition that is inescapable and very real. This is where the mental health stigma comes from. The disassociation people have with a medical condition that kills more souls than any slasher flick. Bipolar disorder, especially mixed with depression and a need to not feel different, didn’t kill Elisa Lam. It’s not that simple. 

While his overall polish and execution was off here, Berlinger still compelled me to a certain degree. I was right there, wondering and thinking what happened-just to myself, not to millions of people. The director’s ability to stage a true crime and peel it out from the inside, even if it points out a harsher truth about us, the consumers. While I was fascinated at times, I knew in episode #2 what happened to Lam. But when the final episode finished, I was more angry than satisfied. That could be due to what I saw, or the way the package was delivered. 

Bottom Line: Not as good as his previous work, Berlinger made me long for a documentary on the Cecil Hotel itself, and not on internet sleuths manipulating a case soaked in mental health instability. Take it or leave it.