The following review is spoiler-free and contains references to cyberstalking. Some content may be sensitive for certain viewers.
A girl in love with a boy. It seems as though everything is perfect for the “golden couple”, Lauryn and Owen, in their small town of Beal City, Michigan. What could possibly go wrong in a small town? Everything is perfect until October of 2020 when both Lauryn and Owen receive a text message from an unknown number saying, ‘Hi Lauryn, Owen is breaking up with you.’ Weird, but the messages stop after a while, and everything goes back to normal. Nothing ever happens in Beal City ever again!
Until September 2021, when the messages started coming back, but this time they’re not stopping.
Now the chase is on. With all true crime docs, there is the thrill of the chase with interviews from family, friends, classmates and getting to play along as a detective. Lauryn and Owen are being messaged constantly. The goal of this messenger was to break up Lauryn and Owen because the messenger seems weirdly infatuated with Owen. The story takes a very awkward turn when Owen gets sent very suggestive content, which is uncomfortable to him as we as viewerss alike. Owen and Lauryn do eventually break up, hoping the messages will stop, but they don’t, and they follow Owen into his next relationship.
The messages directed to Lauryn are completely awful, and it’s hard to imagine ever even sending them to someone. Some messages Lauryn received included ‘no one wants to see your anorexic flat a**’, ‘you are worthless and mean nothing’, ‘kill yourself now b****’, which are all really aggressive. This suggests the culprit is someone who truly hates Lauryn.
At the documentary’s midpoint, the cyberstalker is finally caught. But unlike most documentaries, this suspect came way out of left field, and then it gets more shocking because the cyberstalker is then sat down and interviewed! In almost all true crime docs, there is never a statement from the perpetrator, let alone an interview, and being able to hear why they did what they did is crazy. Their explanation doesn’t make anything better, and still doesn’t even make sense as to why someone could do this to someone so close to them. That’s what’s crazy about this because, yes, in a small town everybody already knows everyone, but you wouldn’t think someone closest to Lauryn would be sending these awful messages to her.
But who is it: her classmates, her friends, her boyfriend? If you want to find out who did it, head over to Netflix and watch ‘Unknown Number‘; it’s only an hour and a half. It’s one of the best documentaries Netflix has released in a long time because someone can watch this documentary with or without knowing the full case and still be shocked by the events that occur.
If you or someone you know is being cyberstalked or harassed online, please contact local authorities.