Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Girl Who Killed Her Parents – The Confession’ on Amazon Prime Video, the Third Movie in a Brazilian Series of True Crime Thrillers

Perhaps you aren’t surprised to learn that The Girl Who Killed Her Parents – The Confession (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) is a movie about a girl who killed her parents, then confessed her ill deeds. It’s the third movie in a series that began with, naturally, The Girl Who Killed Her Parents, which is about the killing part of said deeds, and The Boy Who Killed My Parents, which reiterates said deeds from the girl’s perspective. No matter the angle, these films reek of exploitation, considering they’re based on the headline-grabbing real-life untimely deaths of Manfred and Marisia von Richthofen, who were murdered in São Paulo, Brazil by their daughter Suzane, her boyfriend Daniel Cravinhos and his brother Cristian Cravinhos, in 2002. And now the whole sordid saga is dramatized in a manner that makes soap operas look like The Hurt Locker, which might be funny if it didn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth.  

THE GIRL WHO KILLED HER PARENTS – THE CONFESSION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Suzane (Carla Diaz) wanted her parents’ money. They had millions, and a big house with a full-time maid and a pool where Suzane throws a happy-happy-joy-joy 19th birthday party for herself a week after she orchestrated their murder. They also didn’t approve of her relationship with Daniel (Leonardo Bittencourt), possibly because they’re snobby about his coming from a middle-class family, possibly because his brother Cristian (Allan Souza Lima) had thuggish tendencies and associated with criminals. Either way, the gruesome act is recapped during the opening credits: Late one night, Suzane, Daniel and Cristian entered her house, the two men beat her parents to death in their bed, and the three of them tossed the place to make it look like a burglary and robbery. 

We pick up the narrative in the immediate moments after the murders. Suzane and Daniel drop Cristian on the street in the wee hours and head to a “love motel.” That’s their alibi – we didn’t kill them, officer, we were probing each other’s orifices! The lovers pick up Suzane’s younger brother Andreas (Kauan Ceglio) at a cybercafe and head home, where they “find” the gruesome scene. The cops arrive and by sunrise a crowd has formed outside the house. And just when you expect to see a shot of a TV news reporter saying how this affluent neighborhood is shocked by this awful tragedy, we get a low-angle shot of the police chief’s feet as she arrives on the scene and gets out of the car – and THEN we get the shot of a TV news reporter saying how this affluent neighborhood is shocked by this awful tragedy. The creativity of this movie, to intermingle two wheezy clichés into one scene! It’s what you call “economy of storytelling.”

Anyway, the chief is Helena (Barbara Colen), and she leads an investigation that renders the film half-procedural, half BOATS (Based On A True Story, of course) soap opera. She hauls everyone in for questioning and Suzane tries to throw her off the scent with feigned outrage and distracting stories about how her mother just never got along with any of the maids they employed. Days go by and Suzane seems way too chipper and Daniel seems way too maudlin and any bottom-rung greenhorn cop would look at them and smell HEAPS and HEAPS of bullshit. I mean, they might as well be wearing T-shirts reading HE DID IT and SHE DID IT with arrows on them. Meanwhile, dumbass Cristian takes the cash he stole and buys a nice motorcycle, which gives the cops an in to kick down alibis like a toddler to a cabin made of Lincoln Logs. And it all leads to an uberdramatic conclusion that – well, no spoilers, but it’s right there in the title of the thing.  

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Girl Who… movies are a made-for-TV-budget version of true crime thrillers like Luckiest Girl Alive or All Good Things.

Performance Worth Watching: Colen is the only cast member here who doesn’t pretend to be on an old episode of NYPD Blue or Falcon Crest.

Memorable Dialogue: One line that pops out from the chatter among Suzane’s friends at the pool party: “She’s a millionaire now!”

Sex and Skin: Skimpy bathing suits; a PG-13 sex scene. 

Our Take: Mixed feelings here, since The Confession veers into hilarious, sneering campiness that’s alarmingly close to having tongue in cheek, but the fact that it’s exploiting real-life tragedy for the sake of that sneering campiness. And that right there is where it crosses the line into tastelessness; where more serious, artful films explore emotional, psychological or societal fallout from the seed of a true story, this one is just superficial and trashy. 

The screenplay comes off as a Wikipedia summary punched up with melodramatic clichés, the performances and characters are one-note, and the depiction of police interrogations in the third act are comically overblown. The final dramatic stretch is ludicrous and repetitive as Diaz, Bittencourt and Lima reach credibility-stretching histrionic heights: weeping, wailing, screaming denials rendered all the more ludicrous by cheeseball slo-mo effects and a soundtrack that drives home emotional beats with all the subtlety of a brain surgeon wielding a jackhammer. The film’s most poignant moment comes from Daniel’s mother, who, pondering the potential involvement of her boys in a brutal crime, says, “Love doesn’t kill, right?” That cornball sentiment lands like a 10-pound rock in a half-quart puddle.

Our Call: The Girl Who Killed Her Parents – The Confession delivers what it says in the title with all the style and subtlety of a ’90s made-for-cable production. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.