Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss (2011) is a Werner Herzog documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Herzog travels to a Texas prison and sits down with death row inmates — not to debate capital punishment, but to look these men in the eye and ask what brought them here.

The focal case is Michael Perry, convicted alongside Jason Burkett for a triple murder committed over a car. Herzog interviews both men separately, then circles outward: the victims' families, the inmates' own relatives, a prison chaplain, and a former captain of a death house team who walked off the job after his hundredth execution. Each conversation adds another angle without resolving anything — which is exactly the point.

Herzog shot the film in ten days and is openly not sympathetic toward the condemned as individuals. What makes the film difficult to set aside is the gap between what these people did and the ordinary wreckage of family life that preceded and followed the crime. Stream Into the Abyss (2011) online on iFILM.