The Curious Case of Natalia Grace

What we get here are 6 episodes of Michael Barnett overacting all sorts of scenarii, the focus always on him instead of the main subject which is Natalia.

The filmmakers wallow in all the trashiest sensationalist aspects of the story and, especially Barnett's character, instead of giving a serious account of facts (no doctor is interviewed to give a scientific opinion on her age, no psychiatrist on her mental state). She is not even given the chance to express herself at any point.

We're only given Michael Barnett's version which is ridiculous most of the time, so fake it's cringeworthy.

This curious story deserved a serious approach, and I feel really bad for the people who were used to make this pseudo-documentary : Natalia and the hell she endured, and also the boys, Jake mostly, who is obviously traumatised by what happened in this house.

This is trash, and Michael Barnett is unsufferable.

I'm giving this documentary a high rating solely because I went in believing that this could have been a case of an adult posing as a child and I came out thinking the exact opposite.

Michael Barnett was not believable in the least and did himself no favors with the show. I disliked him immediately. I feel bad for their prodigy son who really seems to have suffered some trauma but mostly I feel bad for Natalia. It's quite obvious, if you pay any amount of attention, that she was not an adult but in fact, a child. She was left to fend for herself by an uncaring and highly materialistic family. There was a lot of abuse. That was evident. How much more though? Because I have a feeling she suffered even more than we know.

The story is very compelling and wild on its own, I don't understand why parts are done in a corny, early-2000s TLC reality show style. The show is so ridiculously overproduced, it can be hard to watch and take seriously.

It only gets worse with season 2. Just tell the story and don't add the sensational nonsense that cheapens it.

If you can stomach the scenes that seem like it's the umpteenth time someone delivered a line, there is still a really good story to unpack and some of the interviews are a breath of fresh air that helped me hang in there.

That's all I had to say about the show but had to add more text to meet the minimum. :/

My stars review come only for the DePaul family and Natalia's life story, in any way for the quality of the documentary.

Absolutely heartbreaking - a young woman with complex trauma presented as a villan. The documentary was much longer than it needed to be, a whole season for that buffoon of a man?? Seriously? The producers of the documentary didn't do a good job morally and ethically. The story is that of a child adopted into the US from Ukraine that went from bad to worst, she was sold by the first sdopting family, tortured and abandoned by the second, beatean and taken advantage by the 3rd and there are no legal consequeances for all this monsters living and continuing to deceive and steal and torture others. It's mind blowing! Ther's absolutly no justice in all 3 seasons. It's impossible for me to understand how this is even happening? Nobody in jail? Nobody?

She was not socilised, she had no documentsm, she was not registred to any kind of education institution, she was kep for the most part of her life as a human punching bag and credit card.

The only decent people in this entire story are the DePaul family and I'm happy she got to meet them again and they had the patience, understanding and so much love to try to make it work.

She'll have to deal with her trauma for the rest of her life and I really hope that there is a functional justice system somewhere and I'll get to read the news at some point that all this families are being held legally liable.

I watched the whole thing in a few days. This is a documentary where you root for absolutely no one, except a few (not even all) of the neighbors. The family is despicable (note: the mom capitalized on her son's autism by writing a book when he was a child that made her a TON of money and TED talks, etc).

The adopted girl/person is clearly a liar and frankly, I don't trust anything she said, the family is ridiculously unlikable, and the main interviewee, the father Michael, is awful to the point of wanting to turn it off. He's obnoxious, dishonest, hyperactive, and histrionic.

Altogether, I hope they all lose - and while that may sound unbelievably cruel if you believe one of the two narratives provided in the doc, I really believe something in the middle, and root for none of them.