Another Shocking, Twisty True Crime Docuseries From Netflix

Directed by Chris Smith, the filmmaker behind another shocking scam-based documentary, “Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened,” “Bad Vegan” follows the now-standard true crime doc format, full of talking-head interviews and big, surprising twists. Indeed, the twists in “Bad Vegan” come so fast and furious that you might find yourself watching this with the type of slack-jawed incredulity of an audience member in a rerun of “The Jerry Springer Show.” The twists and turns will keep you hooked, but that doesn’t mean “Bad Vegan” is some stunning success. It’s actually rather formulaic. But the story is so darn wild it’s hard to resist.

Smith does throw in some stylish flourishes. One, involving an associate of Fox, is questionable in the least and will probably inspire more than a few complaints. But I also appreciated the way Smith is able to capture a kind of melancholy beauty lurking beneath the weirdness. There’s a late segment where we learn that Melngailis, on the run, befriended Dustin, a manager at a local Chipotle. Melngailis and Dustin would sit in the fast-food parking lot and drink beer, and as this is being recounted, Smith cuts to shots of a Chipotle parking lot at magic hour; the sun setting as violin music swells and the neon Chipotle sign is flipped on. It’s strangely beautiful, like a portrait of a suburban wasteland in sharp contrast to the chrome glamor of New York City. We’ve been transported from the bustle of the Big Apple to a world of fast-food franchises and cracked parking lots and cold, lonely nights. 

Still, like so many recent Netflix true crime docs, “Bad Vegan” starts to overstay its welcome. The series clocks in at four episodes, and you get a sense that Smith and company could’ve easily whittled this down to a feature documentary instead. But that’s not what sells right now. Instead, Netflix and other streamers want you to binge. To keep watching. And you probably will — it’s easy to get hooked on the madness inherent to a story like this. And there’s a kind of rubbernecking quality as well. We can watch stories like this, shake our heads in disbelief, and say, “Well, that would never happen to me!” But it might. That’s what ultimately makes these types of scam-based docs so unsettling. We want to believe we’re smarter than we really are. But if loneliness is all it takes to fall into a ruinous con, we all might be trouble. Because aren’t we all a little lonely in the end?

“Bad Vegan” will release globally on Netflix on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.