A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy (2020) Poster

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3/10
At a loss
tarantul9916 April 2020
I live 1 Mile from where this occurred. I followed this story. Two children never found. Movie said one. But it was two. The little girls calf and foot found the rest of her not. Oldest boy not found and hopefully never was there, and he's living somewhere free of these women. I found movie to attempt to portray them as "so good they took on too much" ...this by many interviews of acquaintances. They had no friends per day. How dare anyone attempt to portray these women other than the monsters that they are... I think honest truth would have been a better choice if content. More interviews with needed with those that were there and saw it.
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4/10
I Never Watched This Documentary, But I Saw a Crime Story about This Family
dhainline129 November 2021
Warning: Spoilers
I watched the tragic case of the lesbian Hart couple, Jennifer and Sarah Hart and their six adopted black children. Jen and Sarah were 2 white women who were married to each other. Instead of giving their adopted children a good home, these two women abused them horribly. One daughter climbed out of the window of the family home at 1:30 am and ran to the neighbor's house to tell them how horrible her mothers were. The female neighbor's father called the authorities a few days later and told them his fears for the Hart children. Nothing was investigated. A son snuck out of the house and asked the neighbors for food because the moms withheld food as punishment.

It was all a ruse on Jen and Sarah's part. They paraded the children around at protests and music festivals and the kids all had to smile and act happy. These children were very thin and small for their ages.

The complaints to CPS led the women to do the unthinkable. They drugged themselves and the kids with Benadryl and took off in the family SUV. Jennifer was drunk and she drove the vehicle off a cliff into the ocean. All occupants were killed.

Friends of the women defended these two abusers in the documentary. That is sick! They killed 6 children who were innocent!
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3/10
Stop the background music
fssd2123 May 2021
Try re-releasing this documentary without the corny background music and maybe you'll land a couple more stars. This could have been so much better. Delve into the personalities of these women-talk to their families, figure out what went wrong, was it something in their past? I saw the ratings before I started watching and thought, "Well, I'll see what I can deduce myself from the interviews," but honestly, the music was so annoying-I couldn't get through it.
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1/10
Heartless Movie Lacking Information
gaellevoltaire20 April 2020
This movie is disgusting. Don't rent or buy this, this is just a movie about their friends defending the abusive parents, and trashing the people who stood up for the children. This movie is terrible, excuses were being made for the parents right and left and the children were forgotten. I can't believe they took the time to make this and thought this was a good idea.
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2/10
Why?
sotmog22 April 2020
There were way too many interviews with people who tried their best to turn these witches into humans, but why? Why weren't there more interviews with the children's biological family members? Why didn't this documentary expose more details regarding the abuse these children suffered? Why weren't there more interviews with members of the justice system who ripped these kids away from their biological family members? Why, why, why? I asked myself why throughout this documentary and to say I was frustrated and annoyed while watching this, is an understatement.
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2/10
Big failings
porcelainjungle15 April 2020
This film fails in how it allows friends of the Hart family to make excuses for the two Hart women without confronting this behaviour. Instead, many of the talking heads place the blame on social media, or suggest the two Hart women were simply desperate or "insane". There is no evidence to suggest either. There IS evidence to suggest that they were aware of what they planned to do, which was/is murder, and evidence to suggest a pattern of abuse behind closed doors in that family home.

That this film does not confront the making of excuses by the talking head friends of the family is truly infuriating, if not utterly disrespectful to the memory of the six(!) children whose lives were taken from them.
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2/10
Puff Piece
agreenwalt13 June 2020
This movie does no justice to the murders of these children. I completely understand the need of people who loved Jenn and Sarah to want to defend them or not believe the horror that happened behind closed doors. But there is too much evidence that wasn't even presented in this film that they were child abusers. Repeatedly reported and never really caught. There is definitely something to be said for the mental health issues that must have plagued these women. But the victims here are throes children. I implore anyone interested in the truth to do more research on this case. And check out the podcast Broken Harts. It dives way deeper and gives a lot more insight as to what was really going on .
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1/10
Worst Documentary I've ever seen!
clagunamail14 March 2021
So much information missing and too much talking by people who really didn't even know them besides on social media. Needed to focus more on facts and filling in information. Waste of money and time! Does an injustice to the children by not telling their whole story.
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This film is a disgusting apologia for child murderers
random-7077818 April 2022
A relative of mine worked this case. It is bad enough that this MASS murder of children took place. But the California investigators who could see all the clear signs these woke women killed them were hampered by woke poltical interference as well as media which promoted conspiracy theories instead of the obvious facts of the case.

These women took the adopted kids to Ferguson and used them. They abused the kids in every way for years and years, yet various adoption authorities ignored the obvious signs of systematic abuse because, well, this was a gay couple and therefore no on should say anything negative about them.

This was a mass murder of black kids. But even to this day the left wing nuts who made this "documentary" (and they are left wing producers) are denying the mountain of facts, including the objective data from the vehicle computer, that these two women MURDERED these kids.
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6/10
Missing details - but still deserves a six
LittlePenguin227 March 2021
This documentary was not brainwashing and did not deserve so few stars. Few stars is about the story and what happened, only. It was missing a lot of details in my opinion, I'd like to have known or been explored. These women were monsters. The choice they made was horrid. It is not a choice many ppl would make. There is obviously more to the story, and we'll never know the missing jigsaw pieces. Unless you've been in a headspace where you're spinning out of control, desperate for help, making decisions out of fear only? Yu will never understand, have empathy or understanding about the two moms were going through. Saying all these things does NOT excuse their choices or behaviors when the children were alive, or had their lives taken from them.
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1/10
Complete waste of time.
paperbirds4 August 2020
Such potentially rich content reduced to talking heads and bad audio and production and no real information. Listen to the podcast instead. Felt like a really rushed job with perhaps skewed intentions. Calling this a documentary is a real stretch.
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9/10
Well worth the time to watch.
SteverB17 March 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This documentary is well done. There are several people interviewed who knew the family, and not just through social media, but knew them personally. I thought that I'd seen the definitive documentary on this subject with "Broken Harts," but this doc added much more to the story. The next-door neighbor is extensively interviewed and reveals things that simply weren't in "Broken Harts," which is also a good overview of a case that is mind-bobbling, to say the least. In addition, there was much more detail in the police investigation and even an interview with, I believe, one of the officers on the case.

Many people in the doc report that they were verbally attacked for talking with any positivity at all about the Hart women. This is, apparently, our world now, but any objective viewer should know that, more often than not, these kinds of attacks and online harrassment is colored by bias, fiction, lies, and misplaced anger. The friends of the Hart family should not be attacked just because they're relating what their relationship was like with them BEFORE the crash. These interviewees know what happened and accept that it happened and that it was horrible. The idea that they don't is ludicrous. As one woman said, "Forgive me for not assuming my friends were murderers." How many people know what is going on behind closed doors of even the "perfect" family? No one. Maybe Child Protective Services is supposed to, but even that is rare because they can only act on what they actually see.

I'll finish with another quote from the film: "Ideologues scare me because in the pursuit of that perfect, pure vision, they can be so extreme that they ignore all common sense and precaution." It's something more people should consider before going on the attack, especially in a situation like this. If you're interested in this case, this doc is well worth your while. Recommended.
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1/10
The denial
arden3026 January 2021
This film spent way too much time letting people speak who are brainwashed and have an agenda. Maybe they just don't want to believe it because they were TRICKED and lied to. Nahko never admitted that this was a crime (which it was proven that it was) and these kids were murdered.
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1/10
We have so far to come...
judytheak21 December 2022
The show "Atlanta" did a better job at telling at least one of the Hart children's stories in under 30 minutes in Season 3 Episode 1. Film was misleading and almost erased the very thing that made this tragedy a tragedy: the adopted and murdered children. Friends of the Hart moms seemed to be trying too hard to take up for them... any valuable information that could give more details about the murder was considered private and never discussed. I do not think this should be called a documentary or movie, but I will recommend that it be made available on Youtube for students to study cognitive dissonance.
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1/10
Murderers As Victims
neverbeobedient16 March 2021
I'm not entirely against the concept of a documentary motivated by sympathy for its murderous child-abusing heroines. But in order to pull off that trick, you would need to choose subjects whose problems weren't so aggressively first world. Alternatively, I recommend A) confronting those who claimed to know or be touched by this family regarding their inexplicable blindness to the obvious signs of long-term malnutrition, B) confronting the fact that these kids were abused systematically over many years by their allegedly nice white parents, rather than treating that as a mere theoretical possibility, and C) burning the ending, where a friend of the family attempts to validate his prior understanding of these six kids and his interpretation of their public-facing behavior as 100% genuine, even in the face of proof that they were starved and abused.
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1/10
The Vile Left Attempts to Justify Child Murder
eggs201218 April 2021
Slanted in favor of the killers. The creepy women and their creepy friends defending them make me think of cult types behaviours.
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1/10
One sided..and it was the wrong side
bren-8757620 June 2022
This was a piece about how wonderful these women were. It was not the story I had read about this tragedy. There was definitely something very disturbed with these two women. I don't believe they killed the children to spare the children...I believe they didn't want any witnesses to what happened in that house. They wanted to make it look like it was all for the love of the children that they did everything. They were selfish, sick, abusers and killers.
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1/10
What did I just witness?
lrodmasks14 August 2023
Absolute disrespect for the children who were murdered and continued to reveal how much privilege and negligence is afforded to people who are not BIPOC. These women are abusers and murderes, more than likely the "mom" is a classic NPD or sociopath. Out and about, but hiding behind closed doors. I am always shocked to hear in these situations nobody helped these children or removed them.

The film highlights people talking about their casual and distant relationship with the Hart family. However, the neighbor counters with hard facts or truths. Serious fault in this film. Not a tragedy, but a horrific murder of six bright lights.
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1/10
Kid Killers Being Defended By The Amoral . . . .
sundayatdusk-978598 April 2023
This is an extremely slow and dull documentary where a great deal of the time two murderers are being defended by their friends. Two women who murdered six children. Two women who were so narcissistic they thought the children should not be allowed to live without them. Two women who were trying to destroy all evidence and get rid of all witnesses to their abuse and starvation of children. What would their social media followers think if the truth was revealed?

At least there were saner individuals interviewed, though, such as a psychiatrist and the neighbor who called CPS after various encounters with starving and terrified children. Hey, defenders of killers of children, judging others is not the worst thing a person could do. Making excuses and defending those who murder innocent children, after abusing and starving them, is the worst thing a person could do.

P. S. If you are a sane person, tired of insanity being positively promoted, do watch "Broken Harts" (2021), currently with discovery + at Amazon, instead of watching this pathetic documentary.
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5/10
interesting, but doesn't spend enough time asking the real questions
jaynestrange14 August 2023
It's interesting to see the perspectives of people who were close to the Hart family, but too much time is spent letting these friends ramble about how hurt they feel by online bullies, or how they aren't being 'allowed' to publicly process their emotions. Look, I get that finding our your friends murdered six children is going to cause a lot of complicated emotions, but you can't publicly talk about how your child abusing friends were great people without expecting public pushback.

For what it's worth, I don't think the filmmakers set out to make something that comes across as making excuses for murder. The title is "Thread of Deceit" & I think they did effectively show how well the Hart moms deceived the people around them. Even after they committed murder, there are still people willing to defend them, so clearly they worked very hard to portray a certain image.

It just would have been far more interesting & worthwhile to really get what was actually going on in the Hart household, not just the vague impressions of what they seemed like online or at festivals. Talk to more of their neighbors, teachers, family, anyone who interacted with them on a regular basis. Spend more time exploring how the perfect pictures on Facebook didn't reflect reality.
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1/10
What a Failure
MonochromaticDhalia13 December 2023
57 minutes of children murderer apologists.

Since I wasted my time watching this director that brings 0 insight on how those monsters tortured and killed their adopted children, I would like to know when the person behind this "project" thought that would be a good idea to question if they were killed or not by that excuse of human beings.

The interview with family friends is a big joke - all hippie weirdos from PNW and again apologists!

Let me guess because they were women, therefore, they were incapable of such horrendous acts?!

You did a disservice filming this. CPS, adoption system and friends failed those children.

I wish I could give 0 stars.
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