The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox on Disney+ review: twists itself in knots

Yahoo

19 hours ago

'Story is a powerful thing,' intones the voiceover during an episode of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox, a new TV miniseries produced by Amanda Knox herself alongside Monica Lewinsky.
Who has the power to tell their story – or others' – is the issue at stake. Knox has described Lewinsky as her comrade in their 'sisterhood of ill repute'; this eight-part show on Hulu (streaming on Disney+ in the UK) is their attempt to set the record straight over what exactly happened almost two decades ago. But when the story has become so tangled in its retellings, can anything unpick it?
Knox, 37, was wrongly convicted of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher in 2007, along with her boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito. Excoriated in the British press as the she-devil Foxy Knoxy, she spent eight years on trial and four in prison. Two memoirs and a Netflix documentary later, she's still attempting to clear up the smear campaign against her.
Is a TV show up to that mammoth task? Doubtful, but you can empathise with Knox here. Hollywood has already had so many bites of her apple – the pulpy Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy in 2011, then Matt Damon's Stillwater (2021), which Knox claims fictionalised her experience without her consent. Everyone's told her story on screen except her, until now.
Grace Van Patten is fantastic as Knox, capturing not just her mannerisms but her unfortunate blend of brash Americanism and kookiness that gave the police and the press so much room to twist the knife. Each episode requires multiple emotional nadirs, yet you feel the fear, the distress, the choking grief with every micro expression. It's an all the more impressive performance given Van Patten came to the table late in production, after Margaret Qualley bowed out in 2024 due to scheduling conflicts.
The whole cast is rock solid but too often the narrative eats the plot. Kercher's killer, Rudy Guede, is only alluded to in the second episode and doesn't appear until the fourth. By immersing the viewer in the confusion of the case as it unfolded in real time, those unfamiliar with the facts may lose their way. It should have been cut and dried. Guede was a drifter with a history of armed burglary and violence against women, who had previously been invited into the downstairs neighbour's home. His fingerprints and DNA alone were all over the crime scene.
The jaw-dropping mishandling of the case feels like an exaggeration on screen. The phone tapping, physical assault during interrogation, a faked HIV test to weasel a list of sexual partners out of Knox. Sometimes the truth is so much stranger than fiction it is hard to comprehend. Blink and you miss the cross-contamination between evidence items alluded to in a quick panning shot.
Kercher's role is handled sensitively – we never see her dead, only vibrant with life – but the show lingers over Knox's discovery of the crime scene, rather than the tragedy of a young woman losing her life. Understandably, Kercher's family were against this show ever being made. I doubt they will see this portrayal as anything more than another self-centred episode from Knox.
Twisted Tale also extends more grace than it should to Giuliano Mignini (Francesco Acquaroli), Knox's prosecutor, who came up with the sordid and deranged theories about sex games gone wrong based off little more than a vibrator and Catholic guilt. Yes, Mignini felt persecuted by the public humiliation he experienced over his theories on the Monster of Florence case. The man sees satanic sex and death cults everywhere – that's far weirder than anything Knox said or did. I found Knox's memoir of her choice to make peace with Mignini incredibly moving. This show just re-ignited my petty loathing for him.
Twisted Tale takes some interesting creative swings that brings Knox's oddball personality to life. Travel leaflets come to life with animations beckoning her to Europe. Subtitles for rapid-fire Italian fall away when she becomes confused during an intense legal meeting. A jury member pops his own ears clean off his as the bizarre trial set-up is explained via voiceover. Knox and Sollecito (Giuseppe De Domenico) were tried at the same time as Patrick Lumumba's case against Knox for her false confession – made under extreme duress – that implicated him in the crime.
More of this zany energy would have been welcome, instead of the noir-ish police rooms where no one seems to have been able to locate the overhead light switch. The Italian investigators are cartoonishly evil, brooding in shadows as they come up with obviously stupid theories. But then again, the British media did swallow those lies whole. Tabloid hacks get off lightly in comparison, as brainless bottom feeders dashing off salacious copy on the hoof. For true accuracy, there should have been some cuts back to newsrooms where top editors salivated over slut-shaming front pages.
Ultimately, Twisted Tale never seems quite sure of its audience. Americans will enjoy its hero's journey and cliffhanger true crime drama moments, but may falter at the hurdle of subtitles. Italians will baulk at the way their countrymen are portrayed, despite so much of it happening in their language. Brits will shudder at the melodrama of it all.
A different edit would have made this show excellent. As it is, it gets tangled trying to escape the morass of all that's already been said about Knox. Even if the story has been told by the person who lived it, there will be plenty who refuse to see it as the definitive edition.
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is streaming on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland