The Anthrax Attacks is a true-crime documentary series written and directed by Dan Krauss and focuses on the anthrax attacks right after the 9/11 terror attacks in America. The documentary has a runtime of 95 minutes.
Netflix describes the documentary as:
Days after 9/11, letters containing fatal anthrax spores spark panic and tragedy in the US. This documentary follows the subsequent FBI investigation.
– The Anthrax Attacks Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
The idea of a chemical or biological attack is absolutely horrible, and the fact that we are so underprepared to fight something like this is just so scary. The Anthrax Attacks starts off by showing the audience how helpless people are if human beings decide to be nasty one fine morning.
Anthrax isn’t something that we come across every day. We saw what COVID did to us in 2020 but what would happen if someone decided to throw out something as horrifying as anthrax into everyday life? For audiences who are interested in biochemical warfare and like to delve into fighting unseen assailants, The Anthrax Attacks is going to be a really interesting watch.
I am sure not many are privy to what the anthrax attacks are or what anthrax even is. The 95-minute documentary movie brings a different flavour to true crime that will make you scared of touching anything that comes from outside.
For true crime nuts who look to Netflix for their weekly fix (because, let’s be honest, at this point, we get something new to watch weekly), this one’s going to be something new from the usual murders and terrors. It’s a terror of another kind, and it’s a very interesting one at that.
The Anthrax Attacks brings forth the desperation of those who fought against the horrifying unseen enemy and how, like most other issues, the authorities didn’t take it seriously until something terrible happened. As you learn of the FBI scrambling to understand who would do something like this, on the other hand, there are the victims of the government’s disinterest that resulted in several innocent people being exposed to bio-terror that could’ve been easily avoided otherwise.
You feel scared and angry because there’s nothing you can do as an ordinary citizen. And considering the number of things that common people get in their mails these days, is it too far-fetched to assume that someone might try to pull something similar at the drop of a hat?
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Either way, The Anthrax Attacks focuses on several people’s testimonies as we learn what happened behind the playing field. However, I think the movie does itself a disservice by dramatising the bad guy to such a point that you sometimes feel some sort of liking for him.
The movie becomes reenactment heavy towards the end and its just so over-the-top that you are pulled out of the experience of watching something like this entirely. It stops being a documentary at some point and feels like a fiction movie.
It’s just so frustrating since this isn’t just another story wherein you watch it for the dramatic effects. Real people lost their lives, but the documentary doesn’t do justice to those deaths or even to the investigators who spent years trying to understand who could’ve done such a thing. We see too much dramatization, and although Clark Gregg fills the shoes of Bruce Ivins a bit too well, it’s still annoying to watch the dramatic reenactments.
Summing Up: The Anthrax Attacks
The Anthrax Attacks brings forth the horrible reality that sometimes, your biggest enemies might just be in your own home. Although the extremely dramatic re-enactment is absolutely annoying, it’s still an interesting documentary to watch if you can get out of the silliness.
The Anthrax Attacks is streaming on Netflix.
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