ID
“Do I look like a monster to you?” asks Natalia Grace at the outset of The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, at which point the docuseries cuts to a creepy shot of the controversial disabled dwarf staring out a window set to horror movie-style shrieking sound effects.
ID’s follow-up to May’s non-fiction hit wants to have it both ways, suggesting that Natalia is the victim of horrible abuse at the hands of her adopted parents, Michael and Kristine Barnett, and also a potential psychopath who was pretending to be a young girl when she was an adult (à la the Orphan films) and, to top it all off, was intent on murdering her caregivers. As its head-snapping late surprise indicates, all those things might be true. Yet what’s unquestionably clear is that, for all their wild accusations against each other, everyone involved in this trashy saga is more than a bit screwy.
Per its title, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks is driven by the commentary of its primary subject, who gives her side of the story and, in doing so, touches upon most elements of the original docuseries. This makes ID’s latest (Jan. 1), on the one hand, an alternate-perspective revisitation of already covered material, and its rehashing sometimes leads to runtime-padding wheel-spinning.