‘Brutal Pact: The Assassination of Daniella Perez’ and Crime Documentary Series Streaming

The documentary series Brutal Pact: The Assassination of Daniella Perez recently hit HBO Max for streaming, quickly becoming the platform’s new hit. Documentaries about shocking and inexplicable crimes have become an inviting genre for a large part of the general public, curious to better understand how it all happened, as if for the first time they could know all the facts, through research and interviews with those involved. For many others, coming from more recent generations and too young at the time of the event, it is their first contact with one of the most shocking and surreal moments that has taken place in our country: the pure representation of badly embodied.

And when we talk about the murder of young actress Daniella Perez, who died at the age of 22, we are talking about one of the most brutal and still painful crimes in the history of our country. The death of the actress celebrates her 30th birthday in 2022, and the streaming platform has therefore decided to pay tribute to her and to give the floor to her loved ones to share their pain and above all, the memories of this star who shone and went too quick.

Streaming platforms are full of these shows, each with their own intriguing repertoire. Morbid for many, curious for others and instructive for many, this type of series proposes to scrutinize these events in depth, collecting as much information as possible, relying on distance often as an ally – after spending years and sometimes decades of delinquency. Apart from that, they also generated fiction series based on these same crimes, in itself a new sub-genre of cinema. Building on the momentum of the Brutal Pact, we bring you some of the most compelling documentaries as a series about the most gruesome crimes of our complex human race. Check.

We start the list, as always, with the production that inspired it. Here we collected testimonies such as that of the victim’s mother, author Glória Perez, who had written the soap opera De Corpo e Alma, in which Daniella was a part and was praised for her performance. It was during the soap opera that Daniella was brutally murdered by her co-star Guilherme de Pádua, who was in a relationship in the soap opera with her, and by his wife, Paula Thomaz, jealous of a possible affair between the two. Daniella was married to actor Raul Gazolla, who also gives his version of events. The five-episode program also features testimonials from fellow professionals such as Maurício Mattar, Fábio Assunção and Eri Johnson.

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Speaking of hit documentaries, this one caused a stir at the start of the pandemic. At a time when everyone had to stay locked inside the house for fear of what the outside world would bring, the solution was to look for something totally different and unusual. And for that purpose, The Tiger Mafia fit the bill. The story is too bizarre and mind-blowing to describe, but it is about the owner of a small tiger zoo, known as Joe Exotic. His troop of breeders is a veritable madhouse and as if the extreme dangerousness of the big cats were not enough, disagreements come from all sides, in particular from an animal rescuer of this size named Carole Baskin, a feud that escalates to near murder. The Netflix documentary premiered in 2020 and has two seasons.

Another Netflix production, streaming specializes in shows of the genre. Here in this 2020 series, the subject is Aaron Hernandez, a professional footballer, who even signed a $40 million contract with the New England Patriots team. With a bright future ahead of him, but coming from a turbulent home, the young sportsman had anger, drug and gun issues – just like OJ Simpson would find himself embroiled in a murder case. Hernandez was charged and convicted of murdering two people, including his future brother-in-law, in 2013.

This is another hit series from Netflix. Launched in 2019, this 4-episode show hears psychopath Ted Bundy himself through old interview tapes with him awaiting execution on death row. The United States is the land of serial killers, many have become notorious for the crimes committed. And one of the most infamous is Ted Bundy, who confessed to killing 30 women during the four-year period between 1974 and 1978 in different states. Known for his beauty, Bundy is “the idol of serial killers”, inspiring confidence and always very charming and polite with his victims before committing his murders. The story of the maniac became a movie the same year, when Zac Efron took on the challenge of playing the psychopath in Ted Bundy: The Irresistible Face of Evil.

Talking to a Serial Killer: The Killer Clown

New copy of the documentary series, Netflix this year saved the tapes of another very famous serial killer in the USA. Known as the Killer Clown, John Wayne Gacy worked at children’s parties dressed as a clown. The psychopath was responsible for the deaths of at least 33 youths and boys, many of whom were also sexually abused. Gacy also acted in the 1970s and his detective biography inspired several other documentaries and horror films with the figure of scary clowns.

There’s no getting around it, Netflix also dominates the market for productions of this type and has taken this leap like few other streaming platforms have. Following in the footsteps of some of the most notable serial killers in recent US history, we present to you another psychopath who acted in the 70s – it seems like a fertile time for this kind of madness and crime . After Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy comes the turn of David Berkowitz, known as the “son of Sam” and the “44 caliber killer”. Berkowitz was a postman, and when he was arrested for 8 deaths in New York, after a year and a few months, he blamed the demon who spoke to him through a neighbor’s black dog and ordered him to kill. The guy was responsible for a wave of terror at the time, and even won a film directed by Spike Lee, called Summer of Sam (1999). But this four-part documentary from 2021 offers to theorize that he was not the only culprit of the crimes and that he had accomplices who may still be free.

Changing a bit for a change, we’ve now left Netflix and migrated to HBO Max for this 2h23min 2019 documentary. The story of this affair even inspired a fictional series called The Girl from Plainville, on Hulu, which arrived in Brazil via Starz, and stars Elle Fanning as Michelle Carter. The plot here is as follows, the young blonde in the title is said to have encouraged (to say the least) her friend/boyfriend Conrad Roy through messages on his mobile phone to commit suicide. Roy was a very depressed teenager, who thought he was having a virtual romance with Michelle and thought he could be her lifeline. On the contrary, the young woman encouraged him by messages to commit suicide – and ended up in prison for a year.

Now returning to Netflix and finalizing our list of nominations, we have another documentary series that recently turned into a fictional series starring Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth and nominee Toni Collette, created by our compatriot Antonio Campos, son of the journalist Lucas Mendes. The subject of both works is novelist Michael Peterson’s possible murder of his wife Kathleen. She was found in a pool of blood in her house near the stairs. Both offer a unique behind-the-scenes look at this case. The documentary follows the lawyers’ line of defense in the case, as the series dissects the couple’s lives.

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