X
- TV-MA
- HBO
- TV-MA
- HBO
Summary Director Dan Reed's controversial two-part documentary about the accusations of sexual abuse by Michael Jackson features interviews by two of his accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who are now in their 30s, as well as their families.
- TV-MA
- HBO
- TV-MA
- HBO
Leaving Neverland
Season 1 Premiere: Mar 8, 2019
3.2
Summary Director Dan Reed's controversial two-part documentary about the accusations of sexual abuse by Michael Jackson features interviews by two of his accusers, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who are now in their 30s, as well as their families.
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 26 Critic Reviews
84
100% Positive
26 Reviews
26 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 26 Critic Reviews
84
100% Positive
26 Reviews
26 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The details are still appalling, but what we see and hear in Dan Reed’s riveting and sharply convincing four-hour documentary, “Leaving Neverland” (airing in two parts Sunday and Monday on HBO), supplies the viewer with an unexpected measure of calm. Even the outrage feels at last like the real deal, instead of the manufactured byproduct of tabloids and TMZ.
Unlike Lifetime’s recent Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland doesn’t need to make an airtight case against a wealthy pop-music legend who still has access to vulnerable young fans. Yet it’s the absence of that active threat (if not a competing narrative from the Jackson estate and a few obsessive fans) that frees up Reed to focus on a wider-ranging inquiry into what it means to be a survivor. Viewers of all genders and ages who share that experience are bound to see their own stories in that of Safechuck and Robson. That’s more than enough reason for this eloquent documentary to exist.
User Score
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 66 User Ratings
3.2
36% Positive
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
2% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
62% Negative
41 Ratings
41 Ratings
User Score
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 66 User Ratings
3.2
36% Positive
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
2% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
62% Negative
41 Ratings
41 Ratings
This is a fascinating documentary which explores child grooming and abuse, and how they can happen without anyone intervening.
Report
Leaving Neverland has justifiably drawn criticism for being one-sided. It notes Robson’s lawsuit only briefly and never mentions that Safechuck filed a suit of his own. Those are flaws, but the stories of these two men are too compelling to ignore. A riveting story of childhood sexual abuse and its devastating effects on survivors and families.
For all its gripping testimony, Leaving Neverland is not a great documentary. It is too long, for one. ... None of this diminishes the power of the interviews, which show how much damage Jackson did and continues to do, 10 years after his death.
Leaving Neverland is heartbreaking and hard to watch for many reasons, among them that Jackson is such a part of our collective history. While there are pacing issues here and the filmmaker could have used a few more sources to widen the story, it’s a compelling look at childhood trauma, fame and the mechanics of pedophilia.
A harrowing watch, the soaring orchestral score from Chad Hobson providing a jarring counterpoint to Robson and Safechuck’s graphic accounts of the abuse they say they suffered from Jackson over several years. ... The documentary maker’s credulity is valiant, but it also prevents Leaving Neverland from achieving the same scope as his other works like Three Days Of Terror (another HBO production) or his Emmy-nominated documentary, Terror In Mumbai.
It’s a harrowing account that doesn’t turn away from the brutal realities of what the men describe as meticulously plotted seduction and rape.
A difficult-to-watch examination of grooming and the psychological scars of abuse
Leaving Neverland is not about Michael Jackson, Wade Robson, or James Safechuck. It's about how paedophiles groom not just their victims, but their victims' families. It's about the relationship that victims can form with their abusers. It's about the reasons that can conspire to prevent victims from coming forward. It's about how the effects of childhood sexual abuse linger into adulthood. Undoubtedly, it's unbalanced in favour of the accusers, with director Dan Reed omitting anything on their ongoing lawsuits against the Jackson estate. Irrespective of this, however, it's a hugely important document on grooming and the psychological effects of abuse.
The film tells the similar but separate stories of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, each of whom met Jackson in 1987, when Wade was five and James was ten, and both of whom claim Jackson abused them for much of the following decade. Despite the 240-minute runtime, the only interviewees are Wade, his mother Joy, sister Chantal, brother Shane, grandmother Lorraine Jean Cullen, and wife Amanda, and James, mother Stephanie, and wife Laura.
Aesthetically, the film is as plain as possible. Whereas Wade and James's accounts are graphic, they're never sensationalised, with Reed allowing their words to speak for themselves – there's no cutaways to experts telling us what to think, no montages to suture us into the timeframe. Indeed, at times, Reed waits patiently as an interviewee formulates their thoughts – a kind of "dead air" that one doesn't find in most documentaries.
This tendency to leave the stories unadorned ties into the small pool of interviewees – this is Wade and James's story, and anyone which can't speak to that specific rubric isn't featured. For example, there's no attempt to portray Jackson as less culpable because he didn't have a childhood. In fact, it makes no attempt to portray him at all. Again, this is Wade and James's story only.
Within that, it's as much about the complex relationships that victims can develop with their abusers as it is with the abuse itself. This speaks to why both Wade and James lied for so long (each man defended Jackson when he was accused of molestation in 1993, and Wade again defended him against similar accusations in 2005) – they weren't just lying to other people, they were lying to themselves. And ultimately, the film suggests that rather than being indicative of fabrication, such falsehoods are an understandable reaction to sustained abuse.
A major theme is the manipulative nature inherent to grooming. As much as it is about the manipulation of the boys, so too is it about the non-sexual manipulation of the families - Joy and Stephanie were both talked into granting permission for a man they didn't really know to take their child into his bed, and the two are working today as much to forgive themselves as they are to atone to their children.
Of course, there are problems. The imbalance for example. I understand why Reed confined his interviews to just Wade, James, and their families, but by doing so, he has opened himself and the film up to a not illegitimate form of attack. And because this makes the film easier to critique, it makes it easier to dismiss, and thus easier to ignore, which is pretty much the opposite of what you want to happen as a documentarian.
Another problem is that it doesn't need to be four-hours long. There are several lengthy narrative digressions that, although they help to flesh out the home lives of Wade and James, do very little to inform the allegations against Jackson. Reed also tends to overuse drone shots of LA, which act like paragraph breaks. It's an interesting idea, but there are far too many, becoming repetitive and, eventually, irritating. And then, of course, there are the omissions, which have proven to be a red flag to a bull for Jackson fans. For example, that Wade is suing the Jackson estate is mentioned once, very briefly, and never alluded to again. That James is also suing the estate is never mentioned.
In the end, the lack of balance is a significant problem, but not to the extent that it undermines the way Reed presents the accusations, the way he teases out the process of grooming, the way he unflinchingly presents the abuse itself, the way he comes to focus on the years after the abuse ended – the film's cumulative effect is startlingly raw and generally persuasive. It looks at the process by which Jackson manoeuvred himself into a position to abuse the boys as much as at the abuse itself and at the psychological effects of telling the lie for so long as much as at the lie itself. In this sense, this is a hugely valuable document, not necessarily in terms of the specifics of Wade and James's stories, but in relation to the broader issues of child sexual abuse, and the misconceptions that permeate the zeitgeist.
Report
This film is a softcore erotic pedo-fantasy. Absolutely disgusting trash, and to top it off it is 100% fake. Fake "documentary" that has been debunked 100 different ways. Also it is RACIST.
Report
A trial and a judge has ended up dismantling this hoax. It is not a documentary.
Report
Lies lies and more lies without anything to back it up Michael is and was and always innocent RIP Michael Jacksom
Report
Production Company:
- Amos Pictures
- Channel 4
- Home Box Office (HBO)
Initial Release Date: Mar 8, 2019
Number of seasons: 0 Seasons
Rating: TV-MA
Genres:
Awards
Primetime Emmy Awards
• 1 Win & 5 Nominations
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Bafta TV Craft
• 2 Nominations
