The opening strains of the true-crime documentary are as familiar as the first few notes of a song you know by heart: the frantic 911 call, the snippets of interrogation-room or police bodycam footage, the ominous score, a TV news anchor reporting on the “shocking” nature of the case, and finally the title card telling us where we are and how it all began.
That’s certainly the case with “A Toxic Love Story” on Netflix—but as the story uncoils, this is anything but predictable territory. Unless you’re well-versed in the particulars of the case (and I was not), there will be multiple moments when you’ll find yourself thinking: Wait, WHAT? This is the kind of sofa-viewing experience that will have you texting your fellow true-crime friends to ask if they’ve seen “A Toxic Love Story,” and if they haven’t, they need to get to it. Even though it doesn’t go beyond a straightforward re-telling of the story, that’s probably the wise choice. We don’t need any flourishes or psychological deep dives when the material is so juicy. And nuts. And disturbing.
Under Alexandra Lacey’s assured and well-paced direction, “A Toxic Love Story” kicks off with an obligatory overhead drone shot and a graphic taking us to “ANAHEIM, JUST OUTSIDE OF LOS ANGELES.” We meet a woman named Leslie who says, “I have two wishes…[that] none of this happened…and that everyone would just tell the truth about the events of this story.” (Leslie was a longtime friend of one Ian Diaz, a deputy in the U.S. Marshal’s Service who is at the center of “A Toxic Love Story.” She will serve as one of multiple semi-reliable narrators.)
In 2016, a man named Ian has a meet-cute encounter at a Starbucks in Anaheim with a woman named Angela, and a whirlwind romance ensues. Within a few months, she moves into his condo, he proposes, and they’re pregnant with twins. What could possibly go wrong?
With dramatic re-creations helping to create a horror movie vibe, Angela receives a series of increasingly macabre and chilling e-mails from someone identifying themselves as “LilithIsTruth,” who tells Angela she is going to ruin her life. (That’s Lilith, as in the mythological figure who was supposedly Adam’s first wife, was banished from Eden, and became a revenge-seeking demon. Eeesh.)
We see bodycam footage of multiple police visits to Ian and Angela’s condo, with the couple appearing understandably distraught while steering suspicion to Ian’s ex-girlfriend, Michelle Hadley. Turns out Ian and Michelle had bought that condo and had lived there until things turned sideways, with Michelle allegedly threatening to harm herself or Ian or both before she left. The cops don’t have enough evidence to arrest Michelle—but then things get REALLY sick. Someone puts photos of Angela on Craigslist, soliciting a rape fantasy, saying, “Come to my house. Even if I scream, don’t stop.” Incredibly, a guy called “Rick” consents to an interview for the documentary and admits answering the ad and going to the condo (“as I’m parking, I’m feeling excited”), but leaving when he sees Ian’s name on the intercom.
After yet another horrifying incident where Angela reports that a masked man had attacked her in the garage, pressing her face against the wall before fleeing, police arrest Michelle. She admits to writing an e-mail to Angela identifying herself as Lilith, is held in Orange County Jail, and charged with multiple felony counts of stalking and attempted forcible rape.
Ugly stuff. But we’re nowhere near resolution.
Flashback to Huntington Beach, CA, 2013. A man named Jason Rayburn meets and falls in love with a woman named Angela (yes, the same Angela), who says she is an attorney with the Dept. of Justice and is undergoing chemo treatments for cervical cancer. Soon, however, holes start to appear in Angela’s story, leading to an intervention (caught on home video footage) in which Jason and a group of Angela’s friends and associates confront her with evidence she’s not an attorney—and she doesn’t have cancer. (“Show us your port!” exclaims a soon-to-be-former-friend, over and over. “SHOW US YOUR PORT!” Who are these people?) Meanwhile, in the 2016 timeline, Ian discovers that Angela isn’t pregnant and tells the police, “I feel like a f—king idiot. I think Angela did it all.”
Hold on now. Did Angela set up Michelle? If so, why did Michelle admit penning even a single “Lilith” e-mail? Were the two of them pulling some sort of elaborate con on Ian? To what end? He wasn’t some wealthy, doddering millionaire; in fact, he was a U.S. Marshal, which you’d think would give anyone pause before trying to stalk him, or hoax him, or catfish him. The thing is, we’re only at about the halfway mark of the documentary when suspicion shifts from Michelle to Angela.
For those who don’t know the details of the case, I’ll leave it for you to discover the next series of twists and turns. Suffice to say “A Toxic Love Story” shakes up the true-crime genre and becomes a love triangle about people who aren’t fueled by greed or corruption or even garden-variety (albeit sad and scary) jealousy. It’s something weirder, something that plays into our modern-day fascination with tech, obsession with self, the need to be the center of attention, and using psychological tools to manipulate the vulnerable. What a tangled, mangled web.
