The Trailer for Peter Jackson’s “West of Memphis” Has Been Released

Two days ago, I posted the trailer for Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the latest documentary about the West Memphis Three case that premiered on HBO the same night. Now we have our first trailer for West of Memphis, another documentary about the case which has been produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Amy Berg, who made the Academy Award-nominated documentary, Deliver Us From Evil. The West Memphis Three have had a lot of notable celebrities fighting for their cause, but Peter Jackson has been one of the most active, as he contributed a lot of money to their defense fund and personally financed West of Memphis. At first, I thought it seemed kind of redundant to be releasing another documentary about this case so close to Paradise Lost 3, but this trailer is pretty terrific and it features a lot of footage that I’ve never seen before. I have a feeling this film may provide a lot of startling revelations, and my jaw almost dropped at the moment in the trailer where Michael Carson, a jailhouse snitch whose testimony helped convict the West Memphis Three, now admits he was on LSD at the time and didn’t know what the hell he was doing! West of Memphis will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20. If you’re not familiar with the West Memphis Three case, feel free to read my “Robin’s Underrated Gems” column on the original Paradise Lost.