I Got a Monster

by Tori Haines

An unrelenting look at the prescriptive police corruption plaguing Baltimore’s system, I Got A Monster stares the repeatedly topical topic straight down the barrel.

Director Kevin Abrams follows dogmatic defense attorney Ivan Bates’s journey of taking down the city’s most prolific group of badged criminals: Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, headed by Sgt Walter Jenkins. Navigating the audience through the twists of the cold judicial system while Jenkin’s victims ride shotgun, I Got A Monster succeeds as a deeply educational piece.

The documentary’s strength is also its weakness. In its need to present information, the doc often loses sight of the angry, desperate, and necessary call-to-arms at the center of its message. The moments of true emotional catharsis come in the form of first-person testimonies from the lives Jenkins ruined at random. Devastated and infuriated, the victims recount their traumatic experiences with Baltimore PD’s racial profiling and corruption. These vignettes are the soul of the piece – where the film finds moments of true nuance, ethos, and bravery.

However, the balance of testimony offers scattershot cold legal expertise, with advisors desperate to spell out each step of Jenkin’s downfall.

The stark difference between the two testimonial styles feels left-footed, almost like audiences need to fully switch sections of the brain to properly interpret the speaker on screen.

I Got A Monster is not a documentary playing in the sandbox of multiple, shifting perspectives of opinion. To an extent, fans of documentaries expect and enjoy the feeling of whiplash. This piece is tough, in a way, because nary a soul alive would be able to justify the cruelty and corruption of Walter Jenkins. However, the complete unity of ideologies is what causes the awkward back and forth of ethos vs. facts. Finding some middle ground that gives audiences the touch of a differing perspective (for example, I would’ve loved to hear Jenkin’s legal defense team’s moral justifications) could’ve helped unify the important message as opposed to dissecting it.

I Got A Monster gives a voice to the handful of the men and women who had their agencies, freedoms, and, in some cases, beliefs of a just world ripped from them. The platform Abrams created for them is, in and of itself, worthy of praise and viewing. 

While I Got A Monster often feels like a disjunct narrative, the people behind the Monster make it worthwhile.