Ask your friends if they’ve seen Netflix’s Girl in the Picture. If they have, you’ll know immediately. This is because their faces will crinkle up and they will appear troubled. “One of the most horrific, sickening, frightening things I’ve ever watched,” wrote one person on Twitter. “I literally feel sick,” wrote another. Strangely, I think these were intended as compliments. In telly land, after all, dead women = great content. But let me be clear: this is another abject project from Netflix that parades another grotesque story in the name of winning some bored eyeballs.
Directed by Skye Borgman, who made the similarly disturbing Abducted in Plain Sight for Netflix, Girl in the Picture unravels the mystery behind the death of young woman and the kidnapping of her son. Tonya Hughes was the victim of a hit and run in 1990. Except… she wasn’t really called Tonya, and it probably wasn’t a hit and run. It turns out she was really called Sharon Marshall, and the man who said he was her husband was actually her father. Except… she wasn’t really called Sharon, and the man is not really her father. Etcetera, etcetera. Viewers can only watch helplessly as the rug is pulled from beneath them, over and over, and the story becomes progressively more harrowing.
