‘The Imposter’ Is the Real-Life Version of ‘Orphan’ and It’s Unsettling

The world of creepy documentaries is filled with fine lines. People watch these films to be disturbed by the insanity of real life, but there’s a difference between trying to learn from a dark part of history and exploiting the worst moment in a person’s life. There is one documentary that handles this tightrope walk beautifully: The Imposter walks between these two extremes, delivering a film that is both shocking in its depiction of this con artist and heart-breaking in its reflection on what one family would overlook to regain the son they lost.

Directed by Bart Layton, the British-American documentary doesn’t wait long before revealing its huge left turn. The Imposter starts by exploring the tragic disappearance of Nicholas Barclay, a Texas boy who went missing at the age of 13 in 1994. In tear-filled interviews, Barclay’s family recounts how sweet and loved the blonde-haired blue-eyed boy was. Roughly three years after Barclay’s disappearance, that’s then the real subject of this warped story entered the scene. In 1997 Frédéric Bourdin, a French con-artist, was caught impersonating Barclay. However, he wasn’t caught by Barclay’s family, who was housing him at the time. He was arrested by authorities investigating Bourdin-as-Barclay’s claims of being severely abused.

The most unnerving part about The Imposter isn’t how well Bourdin passes as Barclay. It’s how he doesn’t resemble the missing boy in the least. Whereas Barclay had blonde hair and blue eyes, Bourdin has dark hair and eyes. Barclay was an American teenager; Bourdin speaks with a French accent. The missing person at the center of this documentary was a 13-year-old high schooler. When Bourdin was posing as Barclay, he was 23.

It’s an absolutely unbelievable story, and the documentary echoes that disbelief. Layton flips between long interviews with Bourdin explaining exactly how he came to learn of and impersonate the missing boy and interviews with Barclay’s shell-shocked family. Almost every parent would swear they could identify their own child, but in the case of Barclay’s parents they were almost completely unable to do that simple thing to their horrific downfall.

As the story unfolds, The Imposter becomes less a story about Bourdin’s conning expertise and more about the dark side of optimism. Some members of Barclay’s family admit they didn’t fully believe the found man was related to them, but for the most part this family’s acceptance of the titular imposter boils down to hope. More than anything this family wanted to know that their son was safe and alive. So when a young man appeared and fulfilled their hopes, they embraced him, French accent and all.

Though it’s not precisely the same story, The Imposter‘s examination of letting strangers into the sacred realm of family is not unlike 2009’s Orphan. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra the psychological thriller follows a family who adopts a mysterious little girl. But to their terror they soon learn the person they brought into their home is actually a murderous 33-year-old woman.

Orphan‘s story more closely resembles the case of Barbora Skrlová, a 33-year-old woman who spent months posing as 13-year-old Czech boy. But fictional or not, all three stories are deeply unsettling. If you’re looking for a documentary this October that will put you in the Halloween mood without completely ruining your week, check out The Imposter. It’s a disturbing real-life story that will still let you sleep at night.

Where to stream The Imposter