The aspect which the film They Called Him Mostly Harmless engages with most, is the amateur sleuth culture which is the true focus of the film, the cult which springs up over John Doe, trying and even competing for the status of to put a name to the mutilated corpse found on the Appalachian Trail. It is a feature film authored by Patricia E. Gillespie (Vice’s The Devil You Know), the documentary film reconstructs an age-old tragedy set into contemporary times, the central figures being an anonymised man appearing in the photographs, a couple of professional investigators, and several keyboard warriors from Facebook and Reddit who became the simultaneously tragic and sadistic protagonists in this rather interesting story.
The Gist: We listen to an original 911 call made on 23rd July 2018: A hiker comes across a yellow tent along the Appalachian Trail in Southwest Florida inside is a dead body. The corpse has been described as ‘a bag of bones’ who apparently was starving. There was money though, food in the tent, and strange notebooks filled up with some cryptic computer codes. There was no driver’s license, or credit card or sim card nothing that would help place a name to this person. They checked his DNA, fingerprints, and dental records, but all found nothing. And although the body was obviously emaciated, the medical examiner was not able to ascertain a cause of death. All normal methods the police, law enforcement, and authorities had in mind that would enable them to identify the body, were futile. Who is this poor guy?
At this moment I want to introduce a couple of different, extremely marginal subcultural groups, one of which is definitely more popularly known than the other.
Beginning with the first group, hiking aficionados such as those who pursue the Appalachian Trail that spans over 2,100 miles from Maine to Georgia, hikers and ‘trail angels’ those who provide hikers making long walks assistance in the form of food or water and other amenities gather on social media platforms Facebook groups, and Reddit threads, to post photos of other hikers they’ve met and share tips. Here, everyone has their own nickname, known as a ‘trail name’. The second category might be more familiar to those in most American households who are regular viewers of thriller or crime documentaries: people who are “true crime junkies”. They have a fascination with unresolved mysteries, or in this instance, with bodies that have not been identified. They unearth evidence and trail clues, and as always with unusual passions, share their experiences through Facebook and Reddit groups.
Gillespie tells this John Doe story with the help of interviews with Appalachian hikers, professional investigators including but not limited to, police, researchers, and journalists and including a few self styled such as ‘sleuths’. The first break in the case came after police managed to release coarse composite images of the sketch of the man.
Hikers addressed the dude as someone they recognized, either by the trail names ‘Mostly Harmless’ (the way he jokingly describes himself) or ‘Denim’ (the name given to him when he made the common mistake of starting his journey in jeans, which as anystraggler would know, is not the most appropriate of clothes for a trek). He shared meals and camps with many of them, and quite bizarrely, none knew what his first name was. This was indeed intentional considering that he had certainly taken steps to vanish off the digital map completely. The question is straightforward.
This is when the internet gets to, you know, internetting. The police tried to pass this case forward in a more conventional way by sharing a podcast in regard to the case and intended for those within the true crime community to provide information, whether good, bad or otherwise (we will get to the otherwise in a second here). We meet two of these “sleuths” Christie Harris, who has a day job of delivering clothing but tries to assist in identifying John and Jane Does on the side. And Natasha Teasley, who claims to run a canoe and kayak rental business and claims she is not part of the true crime fandom, although its quite apparent that she used to be part of it.
A part of this film’s dramatization comes from their spats on Facebook with other true crime fans, who seem to have quite worked themselves into a frenzy trying to piece the puzzle that is Mostly Harmless, going on wild tangents (He’s a spy! He’s an alien! He’s a ghost! No, really!). Of course, these eventually turned into mudslinging and bullying while other people were also pulled into the crossfire and suffered from the abuse. Are they and the police authorities in furthering or in any way assisting the investigation? The answer is regrettable – both those statements are true.
Which Movies Will It Remind You Mostly Harmless has some characteristics in common with The Girl in the Picture. It also evokes the narrative of the poor but true story that was offered in the supernatural true crime documentary called The Devil On Trial – both look at how the insane theories were needed to explain victims who remained without a peaceful conclusion.
Admirable Acts: Two individuals give emotional accounts about how they have personally met Mostly Harmless. Marge Creech, aka Magpie, states very sweetly that he spoke to her a couple of times since the majority of the crowd on the trail ignores her for being a ‘crazy old woman’. A person by the name of Brandon Dowell had a sleep over with him with whom he discovered in shared abusive childhoods. He theorizes that some people come on the trail for its therapeutic aspects and in all honesty, he seems to be one of them.
Excellent Lines: Police detective David Hurm says a few beautifully crude words regarding the Facebook nonsense opened up by theories and arguments “Yeah, that’s dumb,” he says. And he manages to stop himself quite from expression of emotions and his eye balls rolling in the upstream direction while describing, “When events turn a little soppy soap opera and too Days of Our Lives…
Our Take: There’s no need to panic Mostly Harmless isn’t going to leave us off the hook. There are a number of explanations offered as to why a person might abandon their ambiguous and sociological focus, one of which is the idea that life is dull and messy. We receive some explanations, however, whether they are indeed comprehensive or provide typically unattainable closure (that having been said, I am a staunch subscriber to the view that closure is a fantasy) is a matter of debate. I think the most interesting thread in the text is devoted to the fact that fans of this mysterious man went totally overboard and invented crazy subplots like his backstory. Some people gazed into his eyes and were enchanted. Others stared into his eyes and saw a serial killer. (Even more people came up with imaginary things and began saying he was Amish or that he was somehow blind or that he was ‘an angel’.) None of that, of course, has anything to do with what was The Truth. The truth is often dreary, and you knew from the start that this deeply intriguing riddle could never be resolved without finishing it off with some sense of deflation, disappointment.
There is nothing that violates the principles of documentary film making in this film Gillespie constructs a few talking heads, shoots beautiful segments of the Appalachian Trail and narrates a story that is both neat and easy to follow. More specifically, Gillespie is both an engaging and skilled interviewer who is able to embellish her subjects and some of their more quirky aspects. She lets people expose a part of themselves that is vulnerable yet relatable like, Harris seems to be living in an extended-stay with her sister and is working hard, and perhaps can’t help but seek true crime fiction as a temporary reprieve; in a brief, depressing (but indeed comical) turn, she badly messes up the Mostly Harmless investigation but takes responsibility and gets on with it. It’s scenes like this that go straight to the core of the human condition: the good, the bad and the ugly all mixed together.
The narrative opens up various interconnected but distinct aspects, including psychological and technological. Disembodied and connected bodies as in the story of Mostly Harmless himself, and in the story of the attempt to find him, are the ideas that stem from the personal story of Mostly Harmless.
It turns out that had it not been for the armchair sleuths, who sift through a lot of chaff to find some useful wheat, the real detectives would never have solved the case. Their enthusiasm was at times the primary driver of the investigation; add that with old style detective work and the latest technologies (the internet cause a group of cosplayers to arrange a crowdfunding campaign to have the DNA profiling analysis done because it was expensive), and the puzzle was gradually coming together. It is a case where the old school meets the new school, the two identifying and countering each other’s weaknesses. The irony here is that a group of diverse individuals, often lonely and even depressed, colluded or otherwise happened to collude, and the effect was positive: what emerged was a jigsaw of a lost heart that required a lot of effort to assemble. It’s a classical happy ending and very gloomy one, too.
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