Stream It Or Skip It: ‘They Called Him Mostly Harmless’ on Max, a Fascinating True Crime Doc That’s Also About True Crime Obsessives

The true crime “community” is the TRUE subject of They Called Him Mostly Harmless (now streaming on Max), which begins as a real-life mystery about a John Doe found on the Appalachian Trail, and ultimately ends up being about the amateur “sleuths” who tried – and competed! – to identify him. Directed by Patricia E. Gillespie (Vice’s The Devil You Know), the documentary tells an age-old tragedy couched within a thoroughly modern narrative, with the primary characters being an unnamed man seen only in photos, a few expert investigators, and several Facebook/Reddit keyboard kops who ended up being the simultaneous heroes and clowns of this fascinating story.

THEY CALLED HIM MOSTLY HARMLESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We hear the original 911 call placed on July 23, 2018: A hiker found a dead body in a yellow tent along the Appalachian Trail in southwest Florida. The corpse was emaciated, described as “a bag of bones.” Oddly, there was food and cash in the tent, and notebooks filled with difficult-to-decipher computer code. There was no driver’s license, credit card or cell phone, nothing that could identify this person. Police ran his DNA, fingerprints and dental records, and turned up nothing. And even though the body was clearly malnourished, the coroner couldn’t determine a cause of death. All the typical avenues authorities use to identify a body were dead ends. Who was this poor guy?

Now, at this point we’re going to learn about a couple of incredibly niche subcultural groups, one more widely known than the other. First, there’s the hiking community, and specifically consisting of individuals who trek the Appalachian Trail, which stretches more than 2,100 miles from Maine to Georgia; hikers and “trail angels” – people who give food, water and other amenities to hikers making long journeys by foot – convene online in Facebook groups and Reddit threads, sharing tips and photos of their encounters with other hikers, and everyone has a nickname, or “trail name.” The other group is more familiar to those of us who watch a lot of TV documentaries: true crime aficionados. They obsess over unsolved crimes or, in this case, unidentified bodies. They dig up clues, follow leads and, of course, like any niche interest, convene online in Facebook groups and Reddit threads. 

Gillespie pieces together this John Doe saga via interviews with Appalachian hikers, professional investigators – police, researchers, journalists – and a few self-appointed “sleuths.” The first break in the case came after police released a crude composite sketch of the man. Hikers recognized the guy as someone they knew by the trail names Mostly Harmless (it’s how he jokingly described himself) or Denim (he made the mistake of wearing jeans when he began his journey, as some amateur hikers do – you have to wear lightweight clothing to avoid chafing). Many had shared meals with him or camped with him, but curiously, not a single one knew his real name. It surely was purposeful, considering how he’d apparently taken great pains to not leave digital footprints when he went off the grid. The question is simple: Why? 

This is when the internet gets to, you know, internetting. Police shared a podcast about the case, hoping to get the true-crimers in the loop to share what they’ve found, good, bad or otherwise (and we’ll get to the otherwise in a second here). We meet two “sleuths”: Christie Harris, who tries to help identify John and Jane Does when she’s not working her day job delivering clothing for a laundry service. And Natasha Teasley, who owns a canoe and kayak rental business and says she doesn’t identify with the true crime community, although it’s clear that she once did. Part of this film’s drama stems from their Facebook battles with other true crime enthusiasts, who worked themselves into a froth trying to solve the mystery of Mostly Harmless, going off on tangents and indulging wild theories (He’s a spy! He’s an alien! He’s a ghost! No, really!). Inevitably, such things devolve into namecalling and threats, and drag innocent bystanders into the melee to be subjected to online harassment. Are they helping or hindering the investigation? The unfortunate answer is, both are true. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Mostly Harmless shares some elements with The Girl in the Picture. It also brings to mind the Occam’s Razor fodder of supernatural true crime doc The Devil On Trial – both examine how crazy theories were concocted for unsolved tragedies, when the reality of the situations was far less tantalizing.

Performance Worth Watching: Two people give touching testimonials about their firsthand encounters with Mostly Harmless: Marge Creech, aka “Magpie,” sweetly says he was kind to her and talked to her on multiple occasions, when most people on the trail ignore her, because she’s just a “crazy old lady.” And Brandon Dowell camped with him one night, bonding with him over shared experiences, both having grown up in abusive homes; Dowell theorizes that some people take to the trail as a form of therapy, and he certainly comes off as one of them. 

Memorable Dialogue: Police detective David Hurm delivers a couple of harsh-but-true statements about the Facebook theories and squabbles: “Yeah, this is kind of dumb,” he says. And he stops himself – somehow – from rolling his eyes when he says, “When things get a little too Days of Our Lives…”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Don’t worry – Mostly Harmless doesn’t leave us hanging. It’s not one of those life-is-frustrating-and-ambiguous-and-there’s-nothing-we-can-do-about-it documentaries. We get some answers, although whether they’re satisfying or they provide “closure” (note: I hold firmly to the belief that closure is a myth) is as debatable as ever. The most compelling thread here is how those obsessed with this mysterious man leapt to some pretty nutty conclusions, rampantly romanticizing his story like fan-fiction writers. Some looked into his eyes and fell in love. Others looked into his eyes and saw a serial killer. (Even others theorized that he was Amish, or blind, or “an angel.”) The truth doesn’t jibe with any of that, of course. Truth is often mundane, and there was no way this truly puzzling mystery could ever be solved without the feeling of deflation, of letdown.

Nothing about the film breaks the rules of documentary filmmaking – Gillespie assembles some talking heads, gets some pretty shots of the Appalachian Trail and tells the story cleanly and clearly. More crucially, Gillespie is a skilled interviewer who’s capable of humanizing her subjects and capturing some of the more offbeat elements of their character. She gets people to share enough of themselves to make them vulnerable and relatable, e.g., Harris, who seems to live a fairly hardscrabble life in an extended-stay hotel while caring for her sister, and likely delves into true crime as a means to escape; in a desperate (and unfortunately funny) moment, she screws up the Mostly Harmless investigation, but owns it and moves on, driven by good intentions. It’s moments like this that cut right to the heart of the ol’ human condition, in all its fraught, messy complexity. 

The story cracks open several cans of worms, from psychological to technological. Ideas about connectedness – and disconnectedness – burst forth from both Mostly Harmless’ personal story, and the story of the quest to identify him. As it turns out, the real detectives couldn’t have resolved the case without the armchair detectives, who turn up some wheat among a lot of distracting chaff. Their passion was the rudimentary fuel driving the investigation at times; combining that with tried-and-true police work and high-tech innovations (the internet sleuths put together a crowdfunding campaign to pay for a pricey DNA analysis), eventually put the case on the right track. It’s a story of the old school and new school compromising, working together to weed out the other’s flaws. The irony here is, a group of disparate, and in some cases lonely and depressed, individuals came together, dysfunctionally or otherwise, to reach a positive outcome: a painstakingly pieced-together mosaic of a lost soul. It’s a happy ending – and a deeply sad one too.

Our Call: They Called Him Mostly Harmless is a standout true crime doc. (And it might prompt some introspection from true crime obsessives.) STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.