Netflix’s latest true crime documentary Don’t F**k With Cats takes on the infamous Luka Magnotta story, but screws up so much in the process. On top of critically acclaimed and commercially successful feature films and television series, Netflix has produced some great original documentaries. True crime, in particular, has become a key part of the streaming service’s business model. Specials like Making a Murderer and Icarus have won them awards and helped to shape wider conversations about the intersections of true crime, justice, and entertainment. Over the past decade, true crime has become a prestigious form of journalism and pop culture thanks to podcasts like NPR’s Serial and series like The Jinx. Netflix’s contributions to that shift have had mixed results, and the latest addition is a new nadir for true crime entertainment as a whole.
Don't F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, written and directed by Mark Lewis, focuses primarily on the Canadian murderer Luka Magnotta and the online sleuthing organized by amateur detectives to catch him after he posted a graphic video online of himself killing two kittens. The case is one of the most infamous crime stories in recent Canadian history and one that many saw as representative of crime in the internet age. Magnotta, a wannabe male model and part-time escort, craved the spotlight and the attention he received for his animal abuse. He craved an audience for his crimes and the infamy of being a killer. Despite the efforts of online detectives to alert the authorities of Magnotta's animal abuse, no action was taken until Magnotta murdered and dismembered Chinese student Lin Jun, a heinous act he also shared online in a video. After an international manhunt, Magnotta was apprehended in Berlin and extradited back to Canada, where he was eventually convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
It's not hard to see why audiences and filmmakers alike would be intrigued by the Luka Magnotta case: Here was a deep-seated narcissist who had previously auditioned for reality TV shows and posted endless photo-shopped images of himself online, a man who demanded an audience for his crimes and inspired countless internet users to become wannabe investigators at a time when the authorities were either clueless or unable to properly deal with online crime. In a defter set of hands, Don’t F**k With Cats could have been something worthwhile, but the series we got that is now currently streaming on Netflix is misguided at best and deeply offensive at worst.
The Series Shows Footage of Dead Cats
Magnotta first drew the attention and anger of the internet by posting a video of himself where he suffocated two kittens to death by putting them in a vacuum bag and sucking out all the air. It’s a deeply disturbing mental image and one that is hard to shake. Given the highly upsetting nature of this footage and the knowledge of what came after, it seems wrong-footed of Don’t F**k With Cats to then show the video. Granted, the documentary doesn’t show the entire thing but you still see dead kittens and hear a lot of audio of the event itself. There are other videos, including one where Magnotta taped another kitten to a broom handle and drowned it in a bath, that are briefly shown in ways where the animal cruelty is impossible to ignore. The filmmakers probably felt that they had to show the footage in order to convey the seriousness of Magnotta’s crimes. Still, it seems questionable at best to assume that your audience won’t know how awful animal torture and murder is unless they see it for themselves. For a series called Don’t F**k With Cats, this show is oddly happy to treat said cats rather shoddily.
Lin Jun’s murder is not shown in the Netflix documentary but we still see a tad too much of the video of Magnotta killing him in a way that is unavoidably lurid. Magnotta wanted people to be voyeurs to his disgusting crimes, unwitting or otherwise, and far too much of Don’t F**k With Cats feels like it’s giving him exactly what he wants.
Don't F**k With Cats Plays Up Magnotta's Celebrity Too Much
Magnotta craved nothing more than attention. He auditioned for multiple reality TV shows. He posted multiple sock puppet accounts and fake Facebook groups dedicated to his alleged celebrity and fandom. He even faked a rumor that he was dating the infamous Canadian murderer Karla Homolka just so he could run to the press to deny it. Everything he did was done with the explicit intention of attracting as much attention as possible, positive and negative.
This dynamic alone sets up a major conundrum for the filmmakers of Don’t F**k With Cats: How do you accurately tell this story and depict Magnotta’s narcissism without playing into his fetish and glamorizing it? Is there a way to make this documentary that won’t instantly give Magnotta exactly what he wants? Sadly, the documentary stumbles hard with this problem. Its slick aesthetic plays heavily into Magnotta’s own style and the image he wanted to convey of himself. The Netflix documentary connects Magnotta’s love of pop culture to his crimes, claiming he took influence from films like Basic Instinct and American Psycho, then depicts that by contrasting him with the inherent cool of Sharon Stone and Christian Bale in those movies but devoid of the crucial context of each narrative. The documentary spends so long focusing on Magnotta’s alleged criminal genius to the point where it seems far too impressed with his actions.
Don't F**k With Cats Overlooks Lin Jun
Lin Jun was a Chinese student from Wuham who had moved to Canada to study engineering and computer science faculty at Concordia University in Montreal. Lin was gay but not living openly as such in his homeland. He was killed by Magnotta, who then dismembered him before committing acts of necrophilia with his body. Magnotta then delivered Lin's left foot to the national headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada, then his left hand to the Liberal Party. Lin’s family admitted in a statement (via CBC) following Magnotta’s sentencing that the crime "robbed us not only of Lin Jun but our ability to think and talk about him without feeling pain and shame." To this day, it is extremely difficult to find information on Lin Jun’s life that isn’t tied to his death or that doesn’t center Magnotta in the narrative.
Don’t F**k With Cats barely spends any time at all talking about Lin. One close friend is interviewed but no time is given to discussion on Lin’s time in Montreal or his passions, friendships, personality, etc. He is defined exclusively as a murder victim, one whose violent death is described and discussed in sickening detail. The documentary becomes so enamored with Magnotta and hinting at his crimes, showing snippets of the murder video, that Lin is reduced to a prop in his own death.
Don't F**k With Cats Tries to Blame the Audience
Don’t F**k With Cats concludes with a moment of what is supposed to be self-reflection, as two of the internet detectives who helped to find Magnotta wonder about the ultimate impact they had on this case. In the end, one of them directly turns to the camera and essentially blames the audience for paying so much attention to Magnotta’s crimes and helping him to earn the infamy he coveted so much. It’s an attempt to turn the inherent voyeurism of true crime on its head and force the viewer to interrogate the role they play in this curious ecosystem, but in reality, it’s simply another slap in the face that exacerbates an already frustrating and deeply patronizing documentary.
For three hours leading up to its ending, Netflix's Don’t F**k With Cats is willingly lurid and misguided in its intent. It shows dead animals, it leers as people watch videos of Magnotta’s crimes and cry, and it delights in comparing the international manhunt for a murderer to a wacky Hollywood crime caper. None of this would have been excusable independent of that ending but it would have meant the documentary was just another trashy true crime show, the kind that has oversaturated the landscape for as long as true crime has been a thing. With that ending, however, its lecture becomes a smarmy “screw you” to the audience that does nothing to truly understand the topic at hand. Indeed, all it really does is shove the narrative responsibility onto the audience rather than deal with the messiness itself. The filmmakers really seem to believe they’ve made a smart choice with this ending but that only works if they ignore the three hours they spent doing everything to make Magnotta seem cool and dangerous and worth obsessing over.
By the documentary’s end, even the title of Netflix's Don’t F**k With Cats seems hopelessly glib, a desperate attempt to pander to the internet with a catchy joke that overlooks the human cost of this story. At a time when true crime has never been more mainstream or prestigious, this series was a reminder of how grimy and dehumanizing the entire genre can be when it’s handled with such staggering ineptitude.