Can I Tell You a Secret review: Terrifying Netflix documentary investigates the crimes of a real-life Kabir Singh

Also read – American Nightmare review: Netflix true crime documentary revisits real-life Gone Girl case with sensitivity, not sensationalism

Slowly, the women find themselves trapped in an increasingly oppressive nightmare, one that they can’t wake up from. The police are involved, but for various reasons — the cops are either ill-equipped or disinterested — they’re unable to provide satisfactory assistance. The show features only one law enforcement officer on camera, and makes the decidedly un-cinematic choice to include statements by different police departments as on-screen text.

As you might have already gathered, Can I Tell You a Secret isn’t the most ambitious documentary — the story is told in very little detail, and with hardly any psychological insight. The filmmakers represent the stalker’s ever-expanding web of influence through illuminated electrical cables – they light up as messages are sent and received. It’s the equivalent of a finance documentary using floating numbers and graphs to communicate fluctuation in the stock market. It does, however, initially present the stalker as some kind of slasher movie villain — he sounds an awful lot like the Ghostface killer from the Scream films — which goes a long way in underlining how dangerous he is.

A still from Can I Tell You a Secret. (Photo: Netflix)

But we don’t get a proper idea of who the women are as individuals, or how their lives were impacted by their ordeal. Sure, it must have been terrifying. But the show lacks a certain perspective. Far too often, it seems like these people exist in a world separate from our own, whereas the goal of something like this, ideally, should be to highlight how susceptible everyone is to cyberstalking. Can I Tell You a Secret makes the increasingly common choice to limit the number of talking heads, choosing instead to rely on rudimentary dramatic recreations. They’ve further reduced costs here by getting the subjects themselves to enact pivotal moments of their harassment.

A similar strategy was deployed in Netflix’s own Lover, Stalker, Killer — an equally superficial examination of a very real, and very scary problem. Neither project comprehensively captures the sort of mental toll that stalking can take on a person. And even though we get plenty of close-ups of tearful faces here, at no point does the series point fingers at any of these women. Laudably, not for a second does Can I Tell You a Secret take a victim-shaming stance.

Read more – The Tinder Swindler review: Netflix’s true crime documentary subverts the genre in empowering ways

If anything, director Liz Williams makes an effort to paint a fuller picture of the stalker, despite his initial portrayal as a horror movie villain. We learn details about his youth, his personal troubles, and the emotional damage that led him to cause further hurt. But while other — more compelling, and presumably more detailed — films would devote an entire chapter to their trial, Can I Tell You a Secret gets it over with in less than five minutes, and that too off-screen. The story itself is so inherently terrifying that it’s difficult to be too critical, especially since it also highlights the systemic flaws that allow for such crimes to be committed. But there’s something to be said about a show that settles for a shrug when it could’ve inspired genuine outrage.

Can I Tell You a Secret?
Director – Liz Williams
Rating – 3/5