A Nightmare in Las Cruces

 

On February 10^th, 1990 gunmen entered and robbed a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  They took around $5000, ordered everyone to get on the ground – and then opened fire. Four were killed, another died of her injuries within a decade, and two others were wounded.  

The age of three of the dead? Thirteen, six, and two, with the toddler shot point blank in the forehead.

 

The case was never solved.

 

 A Nightmare in Las Cruces is a full-length documentary, filmed for the 20^th anniversary of the massacre, that Lisa and I rented from Amazon Wednesday night.

 

It was not a pleasant film to watch.

 

That was to be expected. The film had extensive access to the family of the victims, and their pain, even two decades past the event, was raw and dangerously close to the surface. Add that to a detailed look at a gruesome and senseless crime and no, you aren't going to feel very good about humanity when the closing credits roll. 

But the filmmaker did the viewer, and himself, no favors either. 

For one, the audio  in the film was horrendous. Sinister music plays incessantly at times, even while family members are sharing their thoughts. Other parts of the film have the audio cut in and out and some scenes have an odd buzzing in the background. 

Visually, actual footage of the slaughter, up to to and including video that lingers on the corpse of the six year old, plays far too often. Including the unblurred footage is questionable but impactful, but that impact lessens when it is played over and over. 

In terms of telling the story, small but vital details are omitted. You're left wondering why two middle school girls are in a bowling alley office on a Saturday morning, and why an employee would bring his two and six year old with him to work.  The answer? (thank you Google) is that the bowling alley had a daycare for the bowler's children, which the middle school girls were going to supervise. With no babysitter that day, the two and six year old were going to spend the day in the daycare while their Dad worked. 

The documentary also (in my opinion) wastes time trying to imply that this was a deliberate assassination, as a vendetta against the business owner. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it reeks of desperation, of  a frustrated public being unable to rectify the sad fact that humans sometimes kill, and kill children, for no reason we can fathom. 

The documentary had the best of intentions and occasionally, it is moving and powerful. But overall, I would rate this as a C.