Don't F**k with Cats: Stalking an Internet Killer

At the conclusion of the three-part Netflix series Don't F**k with Cats:  Stalking an Internet Killer,  I booted up a computer to research the ingenious film-makers and writers who had perpetrated this brilliant hoax and parody of the true crime documentary genre.  To my astonishment, I learned that the program is not a parody, that the bizarre events that it portrays all happened, more or less, as shown in the series, and that, in fact, the real story was, even, more lurid and nasty than portrayed in the film.  Some people have called this program the best true crime documentary ever made.  It is fantastically engrossing, although the subject matter is so ghastly that the viewer may feel uncomfortably voyeuristic and, even, defiled to some extent by watching this show.  The appeal is that of highway carnage, freak shows, bear-baiting and public executions. 

In form, the series complies with the norms developed over the last several years for Internet true crime shows.  The program has a danse macabre musical scores -- all disjointed waltzes played over clanking industrial percussion or sinister humming and buzzing.  Every location is established by an ominous drone shot -- the camera gliding over a hill of slag, for instance, to reveal the sun-baked towers of Las Vegas or Los Angeles, Google earth maps into which the camera vertiginously dives to reveal the roofs and parking lots of anonymous apartment buildings, grainy TV footage of newscasters with disturbed expressions on their faces, dim black and white images of interrogations that seem to be taking place on the bottom of the sea, and various commentators staring at the camera with wounded faces and muttering expressions of shock and dismay.  There is an obligatory sequence in which a hardened police detective breaks down and weeps at the horror of the events and we see grieving parents, the superannuated Barbie Doll mother of the accused, herself obviously half-crazed and You-Tube videos intentionally blurred to spare us the worst details.  These shows must be network purchased by the minute because they are often bloated and inefficient -- telling a story that is worthy of ninety minutes across almost four hours.  Since Don't F**k with Cats involves internet sleuths tracking a very bad guy across the worldwide web, there are hundreds of shots showing people logging onto computers, screen shots of occluded passwords being typed, and giant close-ups of messages arriving.  It's all jazzy and high-tech and the fireworks going off more or less continuously on-screen prevent you from sensing how the material has been dilated to fill the available time.  I've seen several of these series and they are extremely formulaic -- each looks exactly like the other:  the only difference is the subject matter which is, more or less, horrific in all cases.

"Don't fuck with cats!" is said to be Internet Rule Zero -- a foundational principle since the Internet is built on cute cat videos.  Accordingly, a group of American cat fanciers are horrified to find on the Internet an eight or nine minute video called "1 Kid 2 Kittens" (it turns out that this is a parody of an extremely viral video called "1 Cup 2 Women" involving coprophagia and vomit gobbling of which I was blissfully unaware -- and which is not cited in the series).  In "1 Kid 2 Kittens", a hooded figure takes two very cute kittens, puts them in a transparent plastic bag, and, then, uses a vacuum-cleaner to suck out the air in the bag, thereby asphyxiating the kittens.  Outraged by this exhibition of animal cruelty, the Internet cat fanciers study the details in the images in an attempt to identify the "cat vacuumer".  The show features a female data analyst for Las Vegas casinos and an anonymous man named "John Green" -- this seems to be an internet tag and his site is marked with an image that seems snipped from a Rembrandt painting, perhaps, "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Culp."  The data analyst has a big, bruised-looking face a bit like her Pomeranian pooch and she announces to us that she had just ended a long relationship and was very vulnerable when the cat murderer surfaced on her computer.  John Green is enigmatic, a sort of Sherlock Holmes amateur detectiv -- his favorite expression, repeated at least 20 times is "Holy shit!"  The cat fanciers group discovers various clues in the video and begin developing suspect profiles.  The cat vacuumer learns of their efforts to unmask him and so creates dummy Facebook accounts, so-called "Sock Puppets" to taunt them and send them astray -- these "Sock Puppets" are named after the victims of serial killers and his primary persona goes by the moniker Stuffsalot Inhisass. He also posts a second video showing him drowning a kitten in a bathtub.  The cat fanciers are outraged and identify the killer as a man in Namibia.  They post his identity and he is ostracized and the victim of a campaign of bullying and harassment that leads to his suicide.  But he is the wrong man:  the cat vacuumer posts another video showing him feeding a cat to a burly white python.  By this point, the sleuths have determined that the cat vacuumer is likely an international "jet-setter" named implausibly enough Luka Rocco Magnotta.  Images of Magnotta, who seems to be a high-priced rent-boy, show him cavorting in various luxury hotels and resorts although it is often also clear that many of the images have been doctored.  The sleuths access a vacuum enthusiasts group -- the heroine who goes by the Internet sobriquet of Baudie Moeven (based on a Beastie Boys song) notes that there are groups of enthusiasts of every possible stripe and dimension on the web.  The internet vacuum hobbyists help the cat fanciers by identifying the vacuum used to kill the cats as one sold in Canada.  And, so, the hunt shifts to the Great White North.   The cat fanciers warn the police that a man who begins by torturing animals usually ends by killing people.  But the police ignore the cadre of self-described "Internet nerds."

As it turns out, the cat fanciers are right -- the "cat vacuumer" posts a video showing him killing an Asian man by repeatedly stabbing him with an ice-pick.  A small dog is, then, enlisted to gnaw on the corpse.  (The dog later turns up dead in the trash.)  A few weeks after the video is posted, the police are summoned to open a big suitcase with maggots writhing out of its innards.  The suitcase contains the torso of a man who has been killed by an ice-pick.  Later, the hands and feet of the dead man are mailed to both principal political parties in Canada and to several elementary schools as well.  (We see Justin Trudeau commenting on the postings.)  By this time, it seems clear that Luka Magnotta is the main suspect but he has fled Quebec to Paris.  Baudie Moeven receives an anonymous video that shows her from behind -- someone has been tracking her in the casino in Vegas where she works.  After various adventures and misadventures, Magnotta is captured in Berlin at an Internet cafe where he is studying news reports about his alleged misdeeds.  The Canadian government has to dispatch one of its air force jets, a sleek black number, to pick up the prisoner.  Magnotta won't confess and demands to remain silent.  A celebrated trial is conducted in which he is convicted.  The series ends with some bizarre, but convincing revelations that Magnotta styled his murder on a scene in one of his favorite films Basic Instinct and, indeed, he seems to have had plastic surgery to make himself look like Sharon Stone.  (The grainy interrogation scene in Montreal is cut in a way to suggest connections to the famous interrogation scene in which Stone exposes herself in Basic Instinct).  Magnotta's defense is that he acted as puppet for a sinister dominant, someone called Manny Lopez -- and, indeed, in the python video, we see someone else's hands manipulating the serpent.  But this figure seems to be derived from an alibi used by Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.  (The film doesn't provide some of the truly horrific facts relating to the case although what we see, or what is suggested, is bad enough.  Comments that the androgynous-looking Magnotta might be disguised as a woman derive from an incident a few years before the cat vacuum video in which Magnotta served nine months for credit card fraud -- he dressed as a woman, got a credit card under a female alias, and racked up thousands in debt before he was caught.) 

The film ends with hypocrisy of the highest order, although the comment is well-taken.  Baudie Moeven says that the Internet sleuthing merely emboldened Magnotta and that he probably would never have killed if the pet fanciers group hadn't initiated its pursuit of him, thus inspiring him to more and more egregious crimes.  "You should turn off your machines," she says to the camera as the screen goes black. 

The program is disturbing and, even, haunting.  Like all of these shows, the "tease" in the first episode is the best part of the production -- the working-out of all the mayhem and butchery is less interesting and, ultimately, tedious although Don't F**k with Cats is so grotesque that your interest, I'm sorry to report, never flags.  There is a small glimpse of the anomie underlying productions of this sort when Baudie Moeven and "John Green" meet, apparently in a cafe in Las Vegas or Los Angeles -- they have never been together in the flesh.  Baudie Moeven is anxious to make a connection with someone with whom she has corresponded over an intense three-year period in her life.  "Green" is standoffish and cynical and, even, insulting.  Of course, you want these two "Internet nerds" to bond in some way.  But "Green" is indifferent to Moeven and, even, seems cruel to her.  It's just a tiny scene at the end of the show but it speaks volumes about the society that these machines have created.