Brandon’s Review:
If you’ve been living under a rock over the last few years, you may not have heard about the teenage girl named Michelle Carter who had encouraged her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, to commit suicide via text. The headlines were attention grabbing, the suspect was somewhat attractive, and the opinions on how much influence one has to push someone to suicide through text messages were divisive. Some say that Conrad would have done it anyway, and other say that Michelle should be fully charged with involuntary manslaughter. Spoiler alert, Michelle Carter was sentenced to 15 months in prison, but the trial that took place was nothing short of dramatic and infuriating.
The two-part HBO documentary “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter” is an eye-opening, riveting in-depth look at all of the moments and interactions between Michelle and Conrad leading up to the last moments of his life, and beyond. Since Conrad left his cell phone and included the passwords in his suicide note, the investigators immediately honed in on the interactions between Conrad in Michelle and their shocking text messages. The entire series looks at all angles including mental health, medication, preexisting depression, domestic abuse and young love experienced solely via text. There are plenty of compelling arguments to be made about privacy and how investigators can gain access to cell phones in related crimes, and the ruling of this case will certainly change the way crimes will be investigated in the future.
My opinion is that Michelle Carter is a vile human being for encouraging Conrad to end his life and not reporting the incident to the authorities at the time, and she should serve more time than the amount she was given. I found it very creepy how the filmmakers displayed all of their text message exchanges throughout the documentary. We text people every single day, but I can’t imagine sharing messages with anyone in the manner that Michelle Carter did with Conrad Roy. It’s extraordinarily tragic, but this documentary is very compelling and worth the watch. While I give this documentary a thumbs up, I give a thumbs down to the whole situation. I know, bold stance, right?
