Girl In The Picture Review: Skye Borgman's Girl in the Picture is a chilling real-life crime documentary that will leave you shocked and disturbed

4/5

Story: Skye Borgman's Girl In The Picture is a hard-hitting, disturbing documentary that revolves around a 20-year-old hit-and-run victim, who passes away mysteriously at the hospital. The woman is not what she claimed to be. What ensues is a chilling web of deceit, false identities, exploitation and torture that no woman in the world should endure.  

Review: The year is 1990. A 20-year-old woman is found dead on the side of the road in Oklahoma with groceries strewn around her. Considered to be a victim of a hit-and-run case, the woman, who is later identified as Tonya Hughes, a stripper at Tulsa, and is admitted to the hospital. She has injuries that are not typical of a road crash victim. Though her vitals seem to be stable, she mysteriously passes away.Suspicion falls on her husband Clarence, who is much older to her and doesn't allow any visitors to her hospital room.  

Their two-year-old son Michael is placed under foster care. The son is terrified of meeting his father, and constantly calls him, 'that mean man'. A paternity test reveals that Clarence is not the father of the child, following which Michael goes missing from the foster care. Meanwhile, when Tonya's friend tries to reach her mother to inform her about her demise, she is informed that her daughter had passed away 20 years ago! So, who is the so-called Tonya Hughes and why had she taken on a forged identity?

Girl in the Picture is a crime documentary film that will leave you disturbed and haunted for a long time. It all begins with a family photograph of a little girl sitting on her father’s knee. But the face expression of the girl and her eyes are unsettling. They are not only vacant, but have a tinge of trauma and despondency, something that is common among children who have undergone sexual abuse. The elusive identity of the duo spurs on filmmaker Skye Borgman to unravel the truth and discover their real identity.

What you then see on screen is a tragic and chilling tale of a young woman, who was given away by her mother for adoption when she was barely two years old. She was later abducted by her stepfather who repeatedly abused her sexually, made her an exotic dancer at a strip club, married her and later went on to murder her and her two-year-old son. It's unimaginable that the youngster (who was known as Sharon Marshall in high school), who was so brilliant in her studies and had received a full scholarship to Georgia Tech, led such a tragic life and endured all the trauma without the knowledge of anyone. 

The documentary traverses the web of deceit of the many aliases of Clarence Hughes, a convicted felon and the relentless torture he commited on Tonya/ Sharon and many other young victims. FBI agent Joe Fitzpatrick, who sets off to crack the case that spans over three decades, says at one point in the documentary, “I don’t know anyone who had as miserable a life as she had, for as long as she had it."  

The best part about the Netflix documentary is that it sticks to the mission of revealing the real identity of Tonya/ Sharon and providing her justice in whichever way they can, including inscribing her real name on her tombstone. The documentary doesn't delve deep into the life of the perpetrator and the focus doesn't waver from Sharon. Though throughout the documentary, you sincerely hope that no one undergoes what Sharon underwent and that the world shouldn't be this dark a place to live in, by the end of the documentary, surprisingly, you feel a tad hopeful. This is mainly because of the friends of Sharon, investigative journalist Matt Birkbeck and the many other officers who appear on screen, who leave no stone unturned to do their bit for Sharon, who deserved a much better life.

Verdict: A chilling documentary that takes you through a web of deceit and exploitation. A must watch!