Last But Not Least

True crime is a long popular genre that's lately been going through a gradual metamorphosis. As audiences have become more sensitive to the ways that grisly recaps of horrific crimes can be traumatizing to the victims and their loved ones, true crime makers have increasingly centered their storytelling on those victims and less on the horrible people who visited these evils upon them. Arriving very much in this spirit is a four-part mini-series on Max, called Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.

This series chronicles several brutal murders of gay men in New York dating back to the early 1990s. More than that, as I was just saying, it delves into the lives of those men and the people the men were taken from. And in equal measure, it's a tale of anti-LGBT violence and rhetoric. The mini-series Last Call makes a strong case that society is currently backsliding to a time we haven't really advanced all that far from in the first place.

Through interviews with organizers in the New York gay community, Last Call makes it clear how much of an uphill battle it was to get law enforcement to treat these victims with respect and actually pursue their killer with any real effort. It shows that just 30 years ago, "indifference" was by far the "best" response that LGBT people -- even in a city like New York -- could expect from the police. And while this mini-series never strays far from its subjects, it makes abundantly clear that there are people today who would have it be that way or worse again. (It makes more clear that it's never really stopped being that way for transgender people.)

It's a "message documentary" that really works because so many of the interview subjects themselves are 100% in support of conveying the message. These deaths are not a pain being co-opted from family and friends, but a pain shared by a much larger community. It's effective because it's never really an irrational rant equating people who "enabled" the murders as murderers themselves; it really lets the facts speak for themselves and shows how people who would never think of themselves as bigoted can nonetheless engage in bigotry.

And yes, it's the tale of catching a horrible murderer. Though when the documentary finally gives some of the spotlight to the perpetrator in the final hour, it's only to reveal just how long the trail of murders actually is.

It's not an easy watch, but I found it a very powerful one -- and far more cathartic than a simple, salacious tale of grisly murders. I give Last Call a B+.