The Reel Review
From 2020 to 2022, the tiny rural community of Beal City in central Michigan was shaken when 13-year-old Lauryn Licari and her boyfriend Owen McKenny started receiving abusive, sexually explicit text messages via an anonymous text messaging system – receiving up to 50 messages per day, some calling on Lauryn to kill herself. This Netflix crime documentary unravels the mystery behind this shocking whodunit.
This is one documentary best viewed without prior knowledge of the identity of the culprit, because award-winning documentary director Skye Borgman again crafts a riveting, succinct story that manages to build curiosity and suspense. A number of suspects – among them, the school’s popular mean girl Khloe, Owen’s shy cousin Adrianna, and even Lauryn and Owen themselves – are interrogated prior to an intrepid FBI agent’s eventual discovery of the identity of the culprit. It’s an absolute shocker.
The police confrontation of the guilty individual, incredibly featuring the actual police body cam footage of the de facto confession, and later the demented tormentor’s attempts to rationalize the cyberstalking, is a fascinating glimpse inside the real-life world of detective work. Sadly, those impacted by the cyberbully’s two-year reign of terror may never totally recover.
REEL FACTS
• The convicted cyberstalker was released on parole in August 2024 and instructed not to contact Lauryn Licari, and will remain under supervised release until February 2026.
• Skye Borgman’s documentary credits include 2024’s American Murder: Laci Peterson, 2022’s Girl in the Picture and 2017’s Abducted in Plain Sight, which earned her 14 film festival awards.
• Owen McKenny was named Senior Homecoming King before graduating from high school in May 2025. He is now attending Michigan’s Hope College. Lauryn Licari has been dating someone else for more than a year.
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