Unbelievable and other Netflix shows and films about coerced confessions

Unbelievable

Marie, identified only by her middle name in the Pulitzer Prize winning article published on ProPublica and The Marshall Project, was threatened with a kitchen knife and raped in her apartment in 2009. She called the police and told them her story, then told it again, and again, and again. But there was no DNA and no evidence other than the burn marks on her arms from where Marie had been tied up. So, no one believed her story.

Not only that, the police believed Marie had made up the attack. Unbelievable, created by Susannah Grant, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, is a drama about Marie’s story, how she was manipulated by two male detectives into believing she was crazy, and the other attacks committed by the same serial rapist who attacked her.

“Even with people that you can trust, if the truth is inconvenient, they don’t believe it,” says Marie in the show.

Unbelievable is an incredible series, powered by Kaitlyn Dever’s breathtaking performance as Marie and Merritt Wever and Grace Rasmussen playing the two most powerfully portrayed female detectives on this side of the 21st century. But, though it’s one of the many terror-filled sequences in this show, Marie’s tearful interrogation scene is one of the hardest scenes to swallow.