‘MH370: The Plane That Disappeared’ Review: A Gripping Documentary One of the Biggest Modern Mysteries.
There is nothing like a good mystery, especially one you can follow through on. A certain morbid feeling can splash over you when getting into the more sordid mysteries, but that sense of mystery is hard to shake off. Netflix has certainly known how to exploit these feelings and has managed to create a line of documentaries that are easy to watch and easy to understand. Some are better than others, but in general, you can be sure that you can start watching one of these and see time flying by.
MH370: The Plane That Disappeared is a documentary series directed by Louise Makilson that tells the story of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The flight disappeared over the ocean in 2014, and the mystery has been ongoing since then. The documentary focuses on telling the known facts about the event and also takes its time to speculate about what could have happened that day. The mix of facts and theories to explain the mystery is entertaining and might put your brain running with ideas.
What happened with Flight 370 was a terrible tragedy, so finding entertainment in something like that might feel a bit wrong. However, humanity has always been attracted to the unknown, and when a mystery seems unsolvable, that label might fuel those looking for the truth even more. Our planet has countless mysteries, and we discover more about them daily. Every day, our world becomes smaller, so when we find something that doesn’t add up, our brains find it immediately interesting.
Makilson and his team manage to create a very comprehensible document. We have the usual mix of interviews with people involved in the event and also those related to the victims. Some interviews can get emotional as we discuss the loss of 239 lives. Each of those passengers and crew had family and friends, and the tragedy touched them. The experts and people who were involved with the event’s investigation are also quite direct, and they bring their information without any cryptic sentences.
The documentary offers the same sense of loss as the HBO series, The Leftovers. In that show, 2% of Earth’s human population just disappears one day. 2% seems very small, but when put in context, we understand that we are talking about millions of people. Here, we are only talking about 239 passengers, and the ramifications of that amount of loss are immeasurable. There is a great use of graphics to illustrate some of the events and the infamous timeline. It all becomes easy to follow, even when it gets complicated.
The mystery presented in the documentary is fascinating. How can such a big airplane just disappear and leave no trace? At the start, the mystery seems just like the result of the plane crashing into the vast realm that is the ocean. For all we know about our planet, the oceans are still some of its most mysterious areas. They are difficult to explore, as we humans are not designed to be in them for long periods. They are also so extensive that looking for something as big as an airplane becomes almost impossible.
However, as the documentary progresses, more and more elements begin to be added to the main mystery, and the result is a rabbit hole into which we must descend even to find a glimpse of the truth. The documentary explains each subject very well, but it is better to go knowing that you won’t find definitive answers to this mystery. Right now, at the moment of writing this review, the mystery continues. You will only glimpse how vast and difficult this mystery is. It might inspire you to do research independently, but don’t think it will give you a definitive answer in the end.
At times, it might seem like the documentary risks falling into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, but it manages to stay right on the edge of that abyss. It says a lot about Makilson and his team that they manage to keep things serious, as they should be, while still injecting that speculative factor of theory crafting. The documentary takes its subject very seriously, and you can feel that there is a lot of respect in how it approaches the people being interviewed.
MH370: The Plane That Disappeared is one of the most solid documentaries Netflix has released in recent memory. The subject is quite captivating, and the ideas explored in each of the three episodes are just exciting and also terrifying at the same time. The documentary doesn’t reinvent the wheel regarding the presentation, but it works even if nothing is exciting about what we are watching. The compelling information we receive in each episode is enough to keep things moving in the story and our heads.
