Critics Of "Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel - Season 1"
Ready Steady Cut
February 09, 2021
The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel feels like a group of conspiracy theorists in a room, happy to be given their platform to spout whatever pixelated finding they can uncover from the web.
If you don't know the story of Elisa Lam, this is sure to keep you guessing from beginning to end. If you do, you will probably still learn something from this show.
Sophisticated, gripping, and full of perspectives usually absent in the genre, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is an expertly-paced mystery and a thought-provoking discussion on classism, mental health, and the ethics of true crime.
The second half of the last episode is actually poignant. There's just a way to do a commentary on the corrosive effect of true-crime voyeurism without being so pervasively voyeuristic, and I wish Crime Scene had walked that tightrope more deftly.