Did you hear the one about the little girl adopted by a couple who then insisted she was actually an adult and was trying to kill them? There’s a decent chance you did. More than 10 million viewers tuned in to The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, the ID docuseries that never met a horror movie music cue it didn’t like. Such numbers, of course, make a follow-up all but mandatory. And so, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: Natalia Speaks, all six episodes of it, is here to brighten up your New Year, or make you shudder at the twisted byways of human nature.
The story is, admittedly, bonkers. As chronicled in the original Curious Case series, Michael and Kristine Barnett adopted the Ukrainian-born Natalia in 2010. Shortly thereafter, they began claiming their new daughter, who has a rare form of dwarfism, wasn’t a six-year-old orphan but an adult sociopath trying to destroy their family, which also included a bona fide child genius named Jake (when he says “Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk” he isn’t joking). The Barnetts went so far as to have Natalia’s age legally changed, then left her alone in an apartment to fend for herself. Scandal! Alert the tabloids! Make a docuseries! And then another one. The original series played the both-sides game, lining up witnesses to claim Natalia was either an innocent victim or an evil menace. Emerging facts make this approach less tenable in Natalia Speaks, and if you’re not into spoilers you might want to quit reading now.
Natalia does indeed speak in Natalia Speaks, facing the camera and alleging a pattern of abuse inflicted primarily by Kristine Barnett. She, not Natalia, would appear to be the monster here, an icy blonde who took credit for her son’s sky-high IQ (she made a pile of cash writing a book about him, or having one ghost-written) and sought to turn Natalia into Genius/Cash Cow, Part II. When that didn’t work out, and Natalia’s medical bills began adding up, Kristine tried to cut her losses by inventing a story that seems to be based on the 2009 horror movie Orphan. This is the argument laid out in Natalia Speaks, and it seems more plausible than any other explanation for this human trainwreck. After all, nobody ever went broke underestimating the power of greed.
Some such series want you to pause and consider the philosophical implications of the depravity they depict. Others operate more as potboilers. This one, like its predecessor, is a potboiler. The tone is one of breathless, can-you-believe-this shock, with the aforementioned musical prompts and manufactured cliffhangers setting the agenda. Early in Natalia Speaks the filmmakers arrange for Natalia to sit down with Michael Barnett, who begins to emote his own tale of abuse at the hands of his now ex-wife. The proceedings are interrupted by representatives of the two parties, including Natalia’s new adoptive father, and when Michael storms off the set shouting, and Natalia bursts into tears, you can almost sense the ghost of Jerry Springer nodding in approval.
This, of course, is how you get more than 10 million people to watch a docuseries – not through subtlety, or contemplation, or taste, but by appealing to lurid curiosity with a blunt-force emotional approach. It is, as they say, what it is. None of which is to denigrate Natalia; if you were her, you, too, would be eager to clear the air. Just know that, although Natalia Speaks shares a corporate parentage with HBO (and you can catch its predecessor on Max), it has little of the multi-dimensionality for which that brand’s documentary works are known. This is stretched-out tabloid fare that aspires to be little else. And millions more will surely tune in.
