The fact that there are so many well known serial killers is an unfortunate reflection on humanity’s capacity to inflict harm on one another and our seemingly ingrained fascination with the macabre. From Ted Bundy to Richard Ramirez to Peter Sutcliffe, Netflix have been capitalising on that fascination with a seemingly endless parade of documentaries exploring some of the most infamous serial killers of the last century. Their latest release, The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness focuses on the theory that the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, did not act alone. A theory that was obsessively championed and spearheaded by investigative journalist Maury Terry, an obsession that dominated his entire life.

Although many will know the name ‘Son of Sam’, they may be less familiar with his particular reign of terror whereby his rampage of random shootings held the city of New York hostage over the summer of 1976, killing six people and injuring another seven. When the police apprehended David Berkowitz and the killings stopped, the city collectively breathed a sigh of relief that the nightmare was finally over.

However, there were some who believed that the police were wrong and that Berkowitz wasn’t acting alone. The most prominent voice for this theory was that of Maury Terry, an IBM employee turned investigative journalist, whose research into the ‘Sons of Sam’ leads him down a dark and obsessive path of conspiracy’s, cover-ups and satanic cults.

Although the decision to focus, not on David Berkowitz, but on Maury Terry’s life and investigation adds a new spin on a genre that is, in my opinion, becoming a little stale, overall its delivery is a little odd. The decision to use a first person narrative, with Paul Giamatti reading from Terry’s own notes and journals, did very little to sway me over to Terry’s side and actually ruined the entire viewing experience for me.

It is difficult to tell whether director Joshua Zeman is sympathetic to Terry’s cause. The first few episodes lays out all of his evidence one piece at a time; interviews, news clippings, even letters from Berkowitz himself, all gathered over decades of investigation. All presented in a way that actually, at times, makes some semblance of sense. But in the final episode, all of Zeman’s work comes undone with an awkward interview between Terry and Berkowitz that does very little to support Terry’s claims but instead highlights the desperation that obsession can cause.

Now I am, by no means, an expert in psychology but I do have an interest and I have paid enough attention to the likes of Mindhunter, Criminal Minds and the like, to know how manipulative serial killers and psychopaths can be and the Terry-Berkowitz interview is a textbook example.

There may be some who will come out the other side of The Sons of Sam believing as Maury Terry did but for me this is just a classic case of a conspiracy theorist twisting ‘evidence’ to suit the theories and narratives that he believes, whilst ignoring any form of logical reasoning, and Berkowitz played right into that effectively making Terry his fourteenth victim.