Coming to HBO tonight, Monday, September 15: TERROR AT THE MALL
Dan Reed’s harrowing account of last year’s massacre in Nairobi makes its official debut tonight, the third of three films the director has made on infamous terrorist attacks around the world.
The present film comes just under a year after the attack on Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall. On September 21, 2013, four young Somali gunmen affiliated with Al-Shabaab strolled through the building, indiscriminately and inconsistently shooting patrons as a supposed act of revenge for some vaguely defined affront against Somalia and Islam. Effectively conveying a sense of raw danger and immediacy, Reed structures his film primarily through surviving security camera footage in various locations in the embattled complex, identifying various subjects in the grainy material who supplement his terse narration with interviews. As a result, the viewer is immersed in a shocking, nearly first-hand experience of panic, confusion, and fear that is hard to shake.
what (not) to doc 