Murder Hotel

First review of 2024, I’m kicking it off with a review of the 2015 documentary “Murder Hotel.” This documentary takes a look at H.H. Holmes and his infamous murder hotel.

If you’re not familiar with H.H. Holmes, he is considered to be America’s first serial killer. He is one of the lesser talked about serial killers but is one of the more gruesome ones, and probably the highest kill count. He built a three-story hotel in Texas for the world’s fair when it was in town. He had his hotel designed to make killing easier for him. Including a safe that pumped gas into it, floors that would drop into shafts, and a basement designed for dissecting and chopping up his victims.

It’s an interesting documentary. He did his killings in the late 1800’s and there are wax cylinders that still exist today that have him admitting to some of his killings. He only admitted to 27, but studies suggest the number was more around 200. It’s mind boggling something so fragile but important survived all these years. The documentary goes in depth of why he did it, and the timeline of when he did it using some of these wax cylinder recordings. I found it very interesting, but I feel like it only scratched the surface. I would have liked it to go more in depth about the hotel itself, into the mind of H.H. Holmes, and even more into the wax cylinder recordings. What exactly made him tick? It explained why he did it for monetary gain, but it didn’t go in depth beyond that. Maybe it’s hard to go much further into depth since it was so long ago, and the hotel itself isn’t around anymore. It makes an interesting watch though, and it’s mind boggling that a place like that really once existed. I give it a 6.5/10.