A Wilderness of Error‘s True Crime Obsession Lingers, Lost in the Weeds

The problem with re-litigating a highly publicized murder case without new evidence or a new angle is that there’s not much to show except the documentarian’s own interest. Like any true crime story aimed at armchair investigators, and one that literally has “error” in its name, A Wilderness of Error invites us to come to our own verdicts on the case and on the merits of the production itself. While the case surrounding Jeffrey MacDonald—an Army doctor convicted of murdering his pregnant wife Dorothy and two young daughters back in 1970—was a fascinating sideshow, the FX and Blumhouse Television-produced docuseries’ depiction of its density is too scattered and willfully obtuse to wow true crime fans.

Adapted from a book of the same name by author/filmmaker Errol Morris, A Wilderness of Error is less single-minded in its storytelling, but still a muddled and guilty party to the narrative-constructing aspect of the justice system which it aims to critique. Director Marc Smerling (The Jinx) takes Morris’ deep-dive and re-investigates, but isn’t finding any Durst-level bombshells here. Instead, the five-part series looks at the two narratives vying for control of the case—that MacDonald’s testimony is true, that a Manson-esque random group of hippies came into his home and killed his family, or that MacDonald committed the murders and tried to cover it up with a story ripped from the headlines of an issue of Esquire found in his living room—and scatters their facts, lies, and rebuttals into a dramatic collage.

The physical evidence points solely to MacDonald, but a local woman named Helena Stoeckley had (at different points over the decades that the case dominated the media circuit) claimed and recanted that she was actually there and involved that night. Stoeckley has been candid about her drug use and the impact it had on her memory, and while Morris’ book favors MacDonald as innocent, the author reads a passage during the series that bolsters the argument that Stoeckley was manipulated by law enforcement from the beginning.

While Stoeckley is the key to the entire series, as her involvement is seemingly the point its source author and its director disagree on, it doesn’t blaze through the established facts and dig into her contradictions. Instead it teases and wheedles, saving its most pertinent information until its final minutes. This is where the series is most compelling: when the main characters aren’t MacDonald and Stoeckley, but Morris and Smerling, it becomes a duel of closing statements. Two lawyers, armed with the same evidence, duking it out after ten paces. Retelling the actual court decisions (the Army cleared MacDonald; the civilians convicted him and denied his appeals) has a certain Wikipedia appeal, but it’s stretched thin.

Smerling does uncover some new material in making the documentary, though none of it proves particularly substantial. Rather, it’s more color in a case made famous for its colorfulness. The vivid, scintillating scandal attracted attention-seekers like hummingbirds to hollyhocks. Lying law officials, morally-compromised journalists, and a documentarian-turned-author all wanted to be a definitive part of the MacDonald story. That magnetizing quality also seemingly drew in people like Stoeckley and, at some point, MacDonald himself. Soon after his initial Army exoneration, MacDonald went full Gone Girl and, joking with self-centered charm in full force, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. It’s harrowing.

More often, though, Smerling lacks emotionally crushing media to embed and attempts to create his own, hammering key talking head quotes and reenactment shots over and over. The sheer longevity of the case necessitates something greater than a standalone film, but Smerling still finds time to drag, rehash, and savor the unsavory.