In recent years, the “true crime” subgenre’s appeal has exploded. Stories of institutional struggle, terrible deaths, and police corruption will always be riveting. If the audience has been paying close enough attention, they could figure out the hints before the characters do. True crime enthusiasts will find a lot to like in Netflix’s newest crime drama, Reptile, directed by Grant Singer (who also directed Se7en), which revolves around how the murder of real estate agent Summer (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) connects a cast of villains in a tangled web of deceit. Reptile has all the trappings of a real crime thriller, but is it based on a genuine event? The correct response involves a few more steps than one may expect.
Is ‘Reptile’ Is Based on a True Story?
The last reveal of the Reptile is really frightening. Nichols discovers that Judy’s uncle, Police Captain Robert Allen (Eric Bogosian), is a member of a group of corrupt law enforcement officers who are using Grady’s real estate company as a money laundering front. Conspirators include Nichols’ pal Wally (Domenick Lombardozzi), Police Chief Marty Graeber (Allen), and Pniewski himself (as Chief Graeber). The official inquiry into Summer’s death at the hands of her husband Wally was suppressed to save the corrupt police officers whose misconduct would have otherwise been revealed. Del Toro not only starred in but also helped create Singer’s script for Reptile. Reptile’s finale is very similar to the 2008 murder of Canadian real estate agent Lindsay Buziak, suggesting that del Toro and Singer were inspired by an actual event.
The official status of Buziak’s murder investigation is “open,” but the suspicious circumstances surrounding her death have cast a cloud of suspicion around her lover, Jason Zailo, whose family runs a very successful real estate office. Casefile, a podcast, discussed the murder of Buziak and offered numerous possibilities as to who may be responsible. True crime fans have continued to investigate the situation and provide explanations. Neither Del Toro nor Singer has made an official statement linking Reptile to the Buziak investigation. The similarities are significant enough to suggest the film was at least partially inspired by the source material that has generated so much debate.
Although Reptile is a work of fiction, the producers made considerable efforts to ensure that the film seemed and felt authentic. Certainly, both Del Toro and Singer put forth effort to make the picture ring true to the genre of the detective story. Although real-life crimes don’t often have happy endings, fans of shows like Reptile may rest comfortably knowing that the situation has been rectified.
“Reptile” Is Inspired By Crime Classics Film
A series of events precipitated by Summer’s murder caused jaded detective Tommy Nichols (Benicio del Toro) to ruminate over his whole career in Reptile. Nichols and his associate Dan Cleary (Ato Essendoh) uncover a group of suspects who were related to Summer in her last days, despite Judy (Alicia Silverstone) worrying that he has gotten himself in too deep. Is it her lover Will (Justin Timberlake), who appears preoccupied with work rather than mourning the loss of his partner? Is it possible that Will’s (Frances Fisher’s) conduct was affected by his controlling mother, Camille? Sam, Summer’s ex-husband (Karl Glusman), is mixed up in a drug transaction; what happens to him? Who is Eli Phillips (Michael Pitt), the enigmatic figure who seems to be at odds with both Will and Summer?
The detectives in Reptile, in the tradition of many classic thrillers, do a great job of taking the audience along every step of the way. The film depicts Nichols and his team as they piece together the case’s evidence, with each interview revealing fresh information that prompts them to investigate the circumstances surrounding Summer’s death further. Singer obviously drew influence from several crime film classics, given the film’s realistic take on the genre. Singer cited a few horror classics, including Rosemary’s Baby and The Night of the Hunter, as well as a few actual crime films as influences.
The singer was inspired in part by David Fincher’s Zodiac, a film that investigated the mysterious killings committed by the Zodiac murderer in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 1970s and which Singer cited as an influence on his own work. Although it may suggest a few possibilities, Zodiac never proves anybody guilty. This makes it stand out from other real crime thrillers. Singer said that after seeing Zodiac, he wanted “to make a movie that was more real-life and evoked aspects of true crime, which is to say not everything adds up, not everything makes sense.”
Singer was also influenced by the 1959 real crime book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, which was adapted into the 1967 true crime thriller In Cold Blood. Capote’s attention to the actual murderers in the Clutter family case made a huge impact when the novel was first published; Philip Seymour Hoffman played a fictionalized version of the author in the 2005 biopic Capote, which examined the release of In Cold Blood. Singer, like Capote before him, realized the importance of doing his homework. The team behind Reptile, he added, “did a lot of research, practical research, learning about certain cases and doing research with actual law enforcement detectives.”
Although not all of the movies Singer mentioned were inspired by factual events, many of them do have parallels to real atrocities. One of the films cited by Singer as an inspiration for Reptile was Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). In The Conversation, Gene Hackman plays a surveillance specialist named Henry Caul who becomes unhappy after discovering that he is being monitored by a shadowy government agency. While the events shown in The Conversation were all made up, many viewers found them frightening because they echoed the real-life Watergate plot that included US President Richard Nixon. Singer aimed to instill the same feeling of unease into Reptile. The film is “constantly trying to manipulate the viewer as to what they’re thinking,” he added, “as to when and who might be guilty, and who might be suspicious and who might not.”
