In the era of True Crimes, documentaries that explain incredible real-life events in great detail and revisit their victims years later, innovation seems almost impossible. From Netflix-style cult documentaries like Wild Wild Country to revisits of dark crimes like The Asunta Case, the streaming platform’s catalog is full of this type of content, but very few manage to offer something unusual to an audience that seems to be fireproof.
However, Amazon Prime Video has just released a true crime like you’ve never seen before: How to Hunt a Monster. In reality, it is an unusual mix between a youtuber’s vlog, investigative journalism, and crime documentary—something practically impossible to find, and that has managed to shock the whole world. But what makes this documentary so unique and unrepeatable? Let’s see.
A villain you wouldn’t believe in a movie
To delve into this documentary, it is important to know who is behind it all: Carles Tamayo. For Spaniards, this name is not insignificant. He is a Catalan journalist and YouTuber who has been using his channel for years to release top-notch journalistic reports. Among them, we find stories about real cults, exorcisms, and even such special content as “This is the life of a bank robber.”
What stands out the most about Tamayo throughout his channel is that he is not the typical clickbait YouTuber who only seeks to make remixes of catchy headlines, but rather he is truly a great investigative journalist who also has a unique narrative sense. Well, this man is the one who tells the story: but its protagonist is someone who, if we saw in a fiction movie, we wouldn’t believe.
The story of How to Hunt a Monster begins when Carles Tamayo receives a call in December 2021. It is from a man he has known well since his adolescence, Lluís Gros, a neighbor from El Masnou, the town where Tamayo grew up and who was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2019 for various cases of sexual abuse of minors.
The call takes Tamayo completely by surprise, who until now was unaware of his story. Gros’ intention is for him to make a documentary to debunk the lies of his victims… but Tamayo has another idea. As soon as he speaks with Gros, he discovers that something suspicious is happening and starts meeting with different victims of pedophilia.
His modus operandi changed over the decades—we’re talking about someone who abused children from the seventies until the 2010s—but he takes advantage of his position of power as a school principal and later as a film director to approach children and exploit them.
This terrifying story soon changes perspective. Tamayo stops wanting to simply see how a criminal who should be in jail lives—and find out why he isn’t—to set a trap and make sure he actually ends up in prison and thus prevent him from creating more potential victims. Because yes, in the documentary we see that his criminal activity hasn’t even stopped.
In this way, Tamayo begins to investigate on his own and does a job that not only reflects badly on the Spanish justice system, which keeps a convicted pedophile free, but also demonstrates that journalism is still useful today. In its three chapters, we get to know a monster that makes you want to vomit every few minutes… and we accompany Tamayo in a story that becomes increasingly chilling.
