‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish’: Disturbing
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Netflix documentary ‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish’ dives into the bizarre case of American teenager Lauryn Licari, who was deluged with thousands of nasty messages from an anonymous stalker shockingly well-aware of her every move. The cyber-bullying was relentless through various randomly generated numbers, and even the Lauryn’s then boyfriend Owen McKenny was targeted. It seemed like the stalker wanted the young couple to break up, but investigation into the case revealed a far more disgustingly disturbing, twisted, and hard-to-grasp truth.
“All of the text messages in this film are real,” says a disclaimer at the beginning of the documentary. The next 90 minutes are interspersed with the awful messages Lauryn was deluged with. They were either sexually charged, explicit, spiteful, threatening, hurtful, going as far as asking the teen to kill herself. And Lauryn was only 14 when this torrid saga began. The texts are shown over both old and new footage of those involved in the case.
If you don’t know anything about the Lauryn Licari cyber-bullying case, then its best to go into ‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish’ blind. Directed by Skye Borgma, “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish” features interviews from all parties involved: victims Lauryn Licari, Owen McKenny, their families, their classmates, the teens who became suspects, their parents, school authorities, the investigators, and even the FBI official who worked on the case, and the kicker: the real culprit’s interview too.
To keep this spoiler-free, I am obviously not going to write about who the culprit is, but the revelation is truly shocking. And the biggest problem with this documentary is the fact that is gives too much space to the perpetrator to present their side of the story. The creators sadly shy away from posing tough questions to the culprit, who seems to have little remorse over their actions. The perpetrator practically smirks at the camera and says something along the lines of: everybody commits some sort of crime, many people drink and drive, the only difference is, I got caught.
‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish’ almost plays out like a thriller, where the events are narrated chronologically and multiple suspects emerge. What is does best is highlight how ill-equipped schools and local authorities are when it comes to protecting students from cyber-bullying. It only took a few days for the FBI to find out the IP addresses of the Catfish and nab the accused, something that could’ve been done by the police months ago.
Stream ‘Unknown Number: The High School Catfish’ on Netflix.
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