Wisconsin Death Trip

This is the spookiest documentary I think I've ever seen. Wisconsin Death Trip (2001) details multiple bizarre incidents that occurred in and around Black River Falls, WI around the turn of the 20th century. There were a number of murders, suicides, and insanities around that time that were apparently related as some sort of mass hysteria.

The movie is fucking creepy. In and of themselves, the events are unnerving, but their presentation makes it even worse. During the film, any time someone was admitted to Mendota, a different narrator would whisper the notes written by the admitting physician. There were some crazy montages that went from chopping off chicken heads to hanging bodies to a woman throwing rocks through windows. To make it worse, the historical reenactments were shot in black and white and like those old-timey pictures... no one smiled and they all looked half-dead.

While somewhat interesting, the documentary did not attempt to tie any of the actions together. The movie was, on the whole, very disjointed. It seemed like a series of short stories in a novel with little connecting them together, except fucking creepiness. Also, the film would flash forward a couple times to present day Black River Falls and I'm really not sure what the purpose was. Finally, my morbid fascination almost always went unfulfilled because most of the incidents were not sufficiently explained. For example "[Shot of abandoned, rundown house with woman walking in shadows] One winter night, opera singer Pauline l'Allemand slipped out of Mendota and made her way to Chicago. Some years later, her name surfaced on a lawsuit. She complained of being disturbed by the sound of odd and distressing voices which she presumed to be the rehearsal of a ventriloquist act... [Change shots to man sitting in window, smoking] it turned out that she was right." WTF!? What is the point of any of this little anecdote, other than to give me the hiebie-jiebies.

I gave it a 2/5 on Netflix because I don't really know what to make of it, but it has me sufficiently nervous to walk home tonight.