Parkland: Inside Building 12

Charlie Minn, an investigative documentary filmmaker whose One October: A Nightmare in Las Vegas (VL-11/18) recounted the Las Vegas concert shootings of 2017, and whose 49 Pulses (VL-5/18) captured the moment-by-moment carnage at an Orlando nightclub in 2016, brings his granular, oral-history approach to the horror story of the 2018 murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. To Minn’s credit, he never mentions the name or backstory of the 19-year-old gunman who killed 17 students and teachers (and wounded others) on February 14. But through devastating footage shot on students’ cell phones during the rampage (most of the images were taken from inside locked yet vulnerable classrooms), the killer’s presence is experienced via the sound of relentless shooting in the hallways and the sight of bloodied bodies. Using simple graphics, Minn traces the precise movements and lethal actions of the killer as he traveled up and down three floors in Building 12. But as in his earlier films, Minn’s best resource is his ability to get victims and eyewitnesses to clearly describe what they saw and endured, all without exploiting emotions or states of mind. The result is a mosaic-like record of a sprawling atrocity, and a chance for viewers to note the dignity, humanity, and courage of survivors. Minn is sometimes criticized for the unpolished look of his documentaries, but the taut simplicity of his brand of journalism allows him to keep up with the sad frequency of gun-related massacres in America. Recommended. Aud: P. (T. Keogh)