Dear Zachary- A Letter To A Son About His Father -

The true genius, however, is the third act— For those who don’t know the story (and this review will avoid the final spoiler, though the film’s reputation precedes it), Kuenne buries a knife that he twists not once, but twice. The editing rhythm changes; the music drops out; the screen goes black. What follows is a raw, unbroken sequence of Kuenne himself weeping, his camera shaking as he interviews Andrew’s parents, Kate and David. The formal structure collapses into pure, unfiltered trauma. The Emotional Mechanism: No Catharsis, Only Wound Most true-crime documentaries offer a form of closure: an arrest, a conviction, a moral lesson. Dear Zachary denies you this. Instead, it forces you to experience the Bagbys’ rage in real time. Kuenne includes the actual voicemails from lawyers, the bureaucratic letters, the footage of Shirley Turner laughing. He even includes a montage of her singing folksongs—a bizarre, chilling choice that humanizes the monster just enough to make her actions more incomprehensible.

Crucially, the film reframes the concept of “justice.” It argues that legal punishment is insufficient; what the Bagbys really want is the impossible: the return of their son and grandson. The film ends not with a verdict but with a dedication to Zachary—a child who never got to read the letter. That final title card is a gut-punch, but also a strange act of love. The film fails to save Zachary, but it ensures he will never be forgotten. Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5) – Half-star deducted only because the film’s relentless anguish can verge on numbing, and its anti-Canadian legal system polemic, while justified, lacks nuance. (Canadian viewers may wince at the broad-brush condemnation.) Dear Zachary- A Letter to a Son About His Father

Dear Zachary is not merely a documentary; it is a cinematic howl of grief, a homemade weapon of outrage, and a love letter soaked in tragedy. What begins as a sentimental biographical scrapbook for an unborn child quickly morphs into a true-crime nightmare and then, devastatingly, into a searing indictment of legal and social systems. To review it deeply is to navigate a minefield of emotion, because Kuenne’s film achieves something rare: it weaponizes the viewer’s empathy against them, leaving you shattered, furious, and fundamentally changed. The Structural Genius: The Bait-and-Switch of Genre Kuenne, a composer and filmmaker, starts the film as a memorial for his murdered best friend, Dr. Andrew Bagby. Using home videos, interviews, and his own warm narration, he paints a portrait of Andrew as a brilliant, joyful, beloved doctor. The aesthetic is intimate—grainy footage, heartfelt piano scores, talking heads wiping away tears. The intended audience is Zachary, Andrew’s unborn son. The true genius, however, is the third act—