'Unbelievable' captures the slow grind of the system, the torturous waiting period between reporting an assault and seeing justice — if one ever does. annaesilman writes
Photo: Beth Dubber/Netflix When Marie*, an 18-year-old woman living in Lynnwood, Washington, said that a masked man had broken into her apartment in the middle of the night and raped her at knifepoint, even those close to her found the story hard to believe. Marie’s demeanor was surprisingly calm and unruffled, and little details of her account kept changing.
The show is divided into two story lines. One follows Marie, played by Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever, living in Lynnwood back in 2008. Marie has spent her life in foster care; now 18, she is living in a community designed to help young adults transition into independent living. She’s looking forward to getting her driver’s license and has been saving up her Costco wages to buy a car. But then one night, a man breaks into her apartment and rapes her repeatedly.
In devoting as much attention to the minutiae of Marie’s life as it does to Duvall and Rasmussen’s detective work, Unbelievable never lets viewers get comfortable. We are denied the reassuring march toward closure that tends to accompany onscreen crime-solving. Even when the detectives’ investigation begins moving along, the show keeps pushing us back into limbo with Marie, whose story won’t be believed for another three years.
“When you see Marie’s experience, it’s easy to understand why someone might recant, even in a case where she actually was assaulted,” said reporter Ken Armstrong, who co-wrote the original story along with T. Christian Miller. “For her, that was the easiest way out of a situation that had become untenable. She was being confronted, and she just buckled under pressure. And they gave her an opportunity to go home, if she would say what they wanted her to say, so that’s what she did.
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